First NATIONAL Days of Thanksgiving- Proclamations from colonial to Presidents Washington, Jefferson

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Well, hello and welcome. This is Bill Martinez and we are live, Happy Thanksgiving to you. We're going to be remembering the first national days of Thanksgiving proclamations from colonial to to Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Moore with Bill Fetter, my good friend, the American Minute creator, nationally known speaker, best author, President of americ Search, Inc. Helping us to remember the first national celebration of a holiday that started back on October the third of seventeen eighty nine, when George Washington issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation designating for the people of the United States a day of public Thanksgiving to be held on Thursday, the twenty sixth day of November seventeen eighty nine. This marked the first national celebration of a holiday that has become commonplace

1:30 in today's household. Bill Fetter, welcome the show. Good to have you with us. It's great to be with you. Well, Bill, on this, you know, going back when it all began, George Washington not only said he was reserving this day for America, but for all nations. And it's interesting, all these years later, America, i guess, is still the only nation that sets a day aside for Thanksgiving. Well, it is a reflection on the strong faith of the founders of the country. So one of the things I did was read through all the colonial charters, then all the state constitutions, and I found something interesting that in the colonies, when things were bad, they would have days of prayer. When things were real bad, they would have days of fasting and prayer. And when things turned around, they would have days of thanksgiving. So it was this relationship with God that he was involved in our day to day affairs. One time there was a famine and some they have a day of fasting, and so a ship pulls in the harbor feel full of food, and they canceled the day of fasting and they have a day of Thanksgiving. And even Ben Franklin talked about that when he was in his autobiography talking about the Pilgrims and how they would have their days of fasting, but then they had the idea of a day of Thanksgiving. Most of the colonies would have the day of fasting

3:05 on Good Friday, but sometimes it was up to the discretion. One interesting one was during a threatned war with France, Ben Franklin proposed a day of prayer and fasting and he published it in his Pennsylvania Gazette. And then after we had the victory, right then there was the Thanksgiving. And during the Revolutionary War there were multiple times of days of prayer and Thanksgiving. And if you want, I can get into some of those. You know, we've got We've got some time, I mean, because I mean the whole idea, this spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving is something that maybe has been lost in translation over the years. We haven't really emphasized it enough, but we should appreciate and embrace the fact that it's part of our DNA, it's our birthright.

3:57 It's what we have done as an natural outpouring, you know, and gratefulness to God as a result of our faith and our belief in Him. And when we appreciate the beneficence of God Almighty so much, the natural reaction is to say thanks. It's kind of like, you know, Bill, It's like when we have an everyday humanoid do a kind thing to us, what is our first natural reaction but to say thanks, right, right, and being grateful, right, you know. I In getting into the Revolutionary War era, there was Thomas Jefferson, and he was Governor of Virginia. And he writes, composes, and introduces, and it passes in the Virginia Assembly a day of fasting for Virginia to be observed on the very day that the British were beginning their blockade of Boston Harbor. And so Jefferson writes, with apprehension from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston, whose commerce and harbor are to be stopped by an armed force, we deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart by the members of this House as a day of fasting, humiliation, in prayer, devoutly to implore divine interposition, and that was Jefferson. And then during the Revolutionary War, the Declaration is proclaimed on July fourth, seventeen seventy six, and then you

5:28 have the British and the Battle of Saratoga and we miraculously capture six thousand British troops General Johnny Burgoyne. So the Continental Congress has what's considered the first national Day of Thanksgiving. So different colonies did it, but this is the first national one after the Declaration November one, seventeen seventy seven. It's the Congress rites, the grateful feeling of their hearts, joined the penitent confession of their manifold sins, that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out, and under the providence of Almighty God, secure for these United States the greatest of all human blessings, independence and peace. The first national Day of Thanksgiving after the Declaration and it mentions through the merits of Jesus Christ. They were pretty outspoken. Yeah, exactly.

6:27 Yeah, there was no debate about it. I mean, this was their belief, this was their worldview, and they saw the beneficence of God time and time again, and knew it was only because the shed blood of Jesus that they could even have any kind of hope or faith of God's answer to their prayers. Right, Bill, Right. And so another is John Paul Jones, and he commanded the Bottom Richard, and he captured the British ship Hms Serrapus, And everyone knows this because they entangle in their firing shots at each other, and their ships are lashed together so that the one, the Bottom Richard, is so full of holes it would probably sin. But the British commander yells out to John Paul Jones, are you ready to surrender?

7:27 And John Paul Jones yells back, says, we've not yet begun to fight. And they fight for two more hours than they win. So the Continental Congress declares a day of Thanksgiving. And Thomas Jefferson is the Governor of Virginia, and he, in accordance with this, gives the proclamation November eleventh, seventeen seventy nine. Congress have thought proper to recommend to the several States a day of public and solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God his mercies, and of prayer for that continuance of his favor, that he would go forth with our hosts and crown our arms with victory. And he goes on that he would grant his church the plentiful effusions of his divine grace, pour out his Holy Spirit on all ministers of the Gospel, that he would bless and prosper the means of education, and spread the light of Christian knowledge the remotest corners of the earth. I do therefore issue this proclamation, and he signs it, given under my hand the eleventh day of November, in the year of our Lord's seventeen seventy nine, Thomas Jefferson. So that was another day of thanksgiving that the Continental Congress recognized. But Jefferson is the governor of Virginia recognized.

8:43 And the thing that's amazing, you know, as you recount this bill, I mean, these are the early days of our founding and development of this country, and how there was a consistent connection and knowledgement of God Almighty. Yeah, and you think, and you go, what happened? How did we lose that? And I'm sure there's probably you know, Jews who probably say the same thing, how did we lose this? What happened? You know? We just forgot and took things for granted, and you know, the human spirit and condition, you know, came into play here. And just like the children of Israel, we see things according to our own eyes and make our own choices and decisions without God, and we do so at our own peril. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I traced that progression through one of my books called Backfired, where it goes through the different Each colony was started by a different denomination. Virginia was Anglican, Massachusetts was Puritan, Rhode Island was Baptist, New York was Dutch Reformed, where New Jersey were originally Swedish. Lutheran, Connecticut and New Hampshire Congregationalist, Maryland Catholic, Pennsylvania Quaker. And they didn't get along, and they would tar and feather each other, but then they had to work together against the King of England.

10:07 After the Revolution, they're being to tolerate each other, and then they ninety eight percent of the country was Protestant, one percent Catholic, tenth of a percent Jewish, and then there's an Irish potato famine and millions of Irish Catholics come to America, and then they broad in and tolerate Catholics. Then there's a persecution of Jews in Bavaria, about a quarter of a million Jews come across, and they brought in to tolerate Jews. And then after the Civil War they changed constitutions to just say believe in God. And then you had all the way up until really the Vietnam War, and some draft dodgers wanted to claim religious conscientious objector status as atheists, and the Supreme Court said, well, we have new religions which do not acknowledge the Supreme Being.

10:58 Among them are secular humanism, and so now secular humanism is tolerated, and then finally atheism, and then Sharia Islam, and those that are anti Christian. And so, if the title of the book is backfired, a nation founded on religious tolerance no longer tolerates the religion of its founders. But I wanted to share another one would Benedict Arnold was going to betray West Point, which was our biggest military base in America, and he was going to betray it. On the very day George Washington was coming to inspect West Point, and the plot was discovered and Washington was saved and the country was saved.

11:43 And so the Continental Congress has a day of Thanksgiving October eighteenth, seventeen eighty It says, in the late remarkable interposition of His watchful providence in the rescuing the person of our Commander in Chief and army from imminent dangers at the moment when treason was ripened for execution. It is therefore recommended a day of public thanksgiving in prayer to confess our unworthiness and to offer fervent supplications to the God of all Grace, to cause the knowledge of Christianity to spread over all the earth. I just think it's sort of telling here they are thanking God. West Point wasn't captured, thanking God. George Washington captured. Oh, and we want to thank God that the knowledge of Christianity spreads all over the earth.

12:28 And then you finally have the British General Cornwallace surrendering at the Battle of Yorktown. And so there's another day of Thanksgiving issued by the Continental Congress October eleventh, seventeen eighty two. It says, it being the indispensable duty of all nations to offer up their supplications, So Almighty God, the United States in Congress assembled, do hereby recommend to the inhabitants of these states in general, to observe the last day of Thursday, November next as a day of solemn thanksgiving to God for all his mercies. Then there's Paris, which ends well, and the thing is built. Excuse me for just interjecting her just a moment. Again, Keep in mind, this was so real to these men in the early because the odds were against them, were they not.

13:22 I mean, they're fighting the number one world power, army, military force, and the on the planet and uh, and they're defeating him, and they have to realize that it's only by God's grace and mercy that they're winning. Right, So you have the the British control all of India, a quarter of the world's population. They control Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, based going on in Canada, Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica. I mean, just an enormous The sun never set on the British Empire. Right. We don't have an army, we don't have a navy, and we're going to break away from this empire and we throw together our ragtag army and navy and could you imagine the political debates at the time over that you're gonna what?

14:13 Yeah, And so Ben Franklin is one of the persons negotiating the Treaty of Paris, which officially ends the Revolutionary War. The Treaty of Paris starts off in the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. And so Continental Congress has a day of thanksgiving to celebrate the war is finally over. And so John Hancock at this time is now Governor of Massachusetts, and he had previously been the President of the Continental Congress. So he declares a day of Thanksgiving in November eighth, seventeen eighty three, less than a month after the Treaty of Paris. And John Hancock says, the citizens of these United States have every reason to praise and gratitude to the God of their salvation. I do appoint the eleventh day December next to be recommended by the Congress of the States, to be religiously observed as a day of thanksgiving in prayer to all the people assemble and celebrate that He is pleased to continue to us the light of the blessed Gospel. That we also offer fervent supplications to cause pure religion and virtue to flourish, to fill the world with His glory. So that's John Hancock having the Day of Thanksgiving on the date recommended by the Congress.

15:33 And then the Bill of Rights are passed in seventeen ninety one and George Washington decides to have a day of Thanksgiving October third of seventeen eighty nine. And this is significant because this is the same week that the First Amendment is passed, as well as the first ten Amendments, and so the same week they passed the First Amendment, Congress asks Washington to have a day of thanksgiving to God. Obviously they did not think the First Amendment was to keep God out of government, right exactly. So here's what George Washington, right. And the thing that impressed me, Bill if I might say, is that here it is interesting, as you say, and you bring up the point that how this is in terms of the timeline. Here we get the Bill of Rights that has passed, and they are embarking on the documentation beyond the Declaration of Independence, here's our constitution, here's how the government is going to going to work. And they have got to just feel like, I mean, this stuff is brilliant. I mean it's beyond brilliant. It's beyond human capacity, the things that are being written here. I got to believe that they had to They had to think that. I don't think in there in any kind of arrogance. Could they think, Oh, you know, I'm such a great writer and a great creer of governments that I've come up with this idea all by myself. Right, Yeah, So I like to zoom out

17:07 and look at the big picture. And writing was invented around three or four thousand BC. Even Neil de Grasi Tyson, the astrophysicist in his Cosmos TV series, stood in one episode, stood in this desert, and he said, it was here between the tigers and euphrates rivers, five thousand years ago that we learned how to write. And so five thousand years ago would have been around three thousand or so BC. He talks about this as being significant because now you can have an accumulation of human knowledge. So it's not just what you can learn in one lifetime and then you die. No, now you can write it down and the next generation can pick up where you left off exactly, and you have that gradual accumulating of human knowledge. And that's his episode there. Well, even in the present time bill, when you're writing something down, you get people adding their two cents into it. Right, And as you know, as the technology began to evolve, you know, all of a sudden, people are realizing, you know, the cumulative thoughts and ideas coming together. Oh yeah, all under the auspices of freedom of speech. When you have that, you know, protecting that ability to do that. Wow, our knowledge expands exponentially, doesn't it. Well, it does. And so now that we have writing, you look at these five thousand or so years of records and what do you see? Most of

18:37 them are court records, and only the upper class could write. Only one percent of Egypt was literate, just the famules and the scribes, the upper class. And they had three thousand hieroglyphs, and the scribes kept them complicated intentionally because it meant that they had a job that they were needed as a class to interpret them. Right, had ten thousand characters. In Samaria had about fifteen hundred characters, which highlights. When Moses came down the mountain, he had the law in a twenty two character alphabet. So easy to learn, kids to learn it. So ancient Israel was the first literate populace. But if we look at these records, most of them are court records, and they are ways to limit the power of a king. So the first way that you limit a king is through his own words. He saw this with Darius write in the Book of Daniel where they say, hey, nobody can pray to you for thirty days, okay, and he signs it, and then they say we caught Daniel. He was praying. You got to throw him in the lions then, even though you liked him, And it says the king spent all day trying to get Daniel off the hook, but he couldn't, and the mayor God delivered you. So here the king was limited by the king's own words, and kings were limited by past king's words.

19:55 So the Jews are rebuilding the temple, the locals make him stop. They send to the king, say look through the records, and they find the letter where Cyrus said you go ahead and build. And the current king honored the past king's words. So all the past king's words get called customs and traditions and the limiting effect. And then religion limited the king. So in the pagan cultures, these kings claimed to be divinely appointed, so they needed a religious class to sort of give him a rubber stamp to say yes, yes, they're divinely appointed. And then in Europe it's called the divine right of kings and the pope crown these different kings, and so there was a limiting effect on the king's arbitrary power. And then the king needed taxes, and so he had guys collecting taxes, and he would allow them to have horses and weapons so they could extract the taxes, and he let him have a nice strong house so they could keep it before they turned it over to him. And these guys got called barons, and so if the king didn't like one of them, like King John in twelve fifteen AD, he would just arbitrarily get rid of one and replace him. Yeah, it's twenty five barons. One day asked the king for a meeting, and he shows up on the fields of running meat, and he thought it was just going to be them, but it's them and their armies, and they cut off his way back to his castle and they say, we want you to sign this magna carta limiting the arbitrary power of a king. But finally America comes along and we're like, why bother limiting a king, Let's just not have

21:27 one right, make the people the king. So we talked about the Founders, we talk about the Congress, we talk about the Bill of Rights. It literally in an all of recorded human history. It was just revolutionary that you could have millions of people ruling ourselves without a king exactly. And so they had a day of Thanksgiving after the Bill of Rights were passed October third, seventeen eighty nine. It says, whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God. This is Washington writing, and to obey his will, be grateful for his benefits, humbly employers protection. Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested that the people of the United States have a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by knowledge and grateful hearts. The signal favors to Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now, therefore, I Washington recommend Thursday the twenty sixth November be devoted to the people the United States, a service to the great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, And that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for which the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been able to establish constitutions of government, particularly the national one now lately instituted. So here he is thanking God for the Constitution and

22:59 the Bill of Right. And among the Bill Rights is the first Amendments. And obviously the first Amendment was not to outlaw God, because here's the very Congress that passed it asking Washington to have a day of Thanksgiving me exactly exactly. Yeah, how does that square up with separation of church and state. The interesting thing also, I you know, when people do reconnect with Washington's proclamation of the first Thanksgiving here safety and happiness really sticks out that it is the duty of government to ensure the safety and happiness of its citizenry. And people might want to stop for a moment and measure those two elements in our current government institutions. Yeah, and when you wrote a book on the history of socialism. The book is titled Socialism the Real History from Plato to the Present, and I talk about how socialism is basically a dictatorship. Every socialist country has a dictator. Right the USSR AS Union of Soviet Socialist Republics say they had a dictator stolen NAZI stands for National Socialist Workers Party, It had a dictator Hitler. And socialist countries are dictatorships. And how do you get people to give up their rights and freedoms to a dictator. You have to get them insecure. You have to create a crisis. You have to create

24:30 a panic, you have to have crime go up, you have to have them feeling threatens and then they panic and will surrender their freedom. So that's why a lot of people are concerned that it seems that one particular political party wants crime to go up in the cities. Let the criminals out of jail. Have you prosecutors that don't prosecute the criminals and exactly care more about the criminals and the victims of their crimes, And then you let the legals in and a lot of the our gang members. Other countries are emptying their prisons of their most exactly prisoners and letting them come across the border. Why because if crime goes up, people will panic and will beg the government to come in and restore order. And the government will come in. They'll restore order, all right, but they'll flip it from a bottom up form of government at the expense of your freedom and liberty. You know. It is a quite amazing bill and not surprising though at the same time that America has been a thorn in the sides, in the very hearts of those oligarchs and those communist dictators, because we are in the face of their leadership. We're showing the world that there is a better way, and that threatens them, doesn't it. It does now we did at the beginning of our country had a threatening situation. It's called the Whiskey Rebellion. In Pennsylvania Pittsburgh. The people

26:03 would have their corn, and by the time they brought it to the coast to the ports, the taxes between the states would eat up their profit. They would turn the corn into whiskey, but then there was taxes between the states, and so then they would lose money by selling it. And so this whisky rebellion George Washington was the only president to actually be on a horse and lead the army as commander in chief while president. By the time it gets to Pittsburgh, the Whiskey Rebellion fell apart, and he does something unique. He forgives the people and lets him go home. Where every other dictator in history would have killed anybody exactly, there'd have been heads lopped off exactly.

26:47 And then Washington has a National Day of Thanksgiving September twenty fifth, seventeen ninety four, and I could read it, but it's similar to the other ones. And then on January first, seventeen ninety five, he has an other Day of Thanksgiving, and he talks about he is one thankful president, isn't he. That's what we're getting from all this history is that we had a president that was very thankful to God, you know, repeatedly. Yeah, when I read through his orders while he was general, and he would always after every battle, thank God for the victory and for protecting them.

27:29 And then we have the War of eighteen twelve. It ends and the Congress passes a National Day of Thanksgiving March fourth, eighteen fifteen. The Senate and House of Representatives signify their desire that a day may be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnity, a day of thanksgiving and of devout acknowledgments to Almighty God. Then you have Lincoln, and he's the one to have the first annual day of Thanksgiving. Prior to that it was on an as needed basis, right, but now it's And so Lincoln said in the midst of the Civil War of unequal magnitude and severity. I therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in sea and so journeying in foreign lands, set apart the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father, who dwelleth in heaven. And I recommend also that, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care of all those who have become widows and orphans and mourners, are sufferers, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty handy healed the wounds of the nation, so and so forth.

28:45 And that's Abraham Lincoln. You know, Bill, you know the thing as you are going through all this it, as we said earlier, this all the more reminds us of not a separation of God state, but a reliance on God for state. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, So this idea that there should be a separation of God, boy, our founding fathers would never you know, based on their testimony and their prayers, they would never ever conceive of such a thing. It would have to take you know, a heretical individual, you know, to try and tear apart the institution and our reliance on God himself. And of course this was happening.

29:34 Ever so suddenly as they say, and you will get you will get to this. And that is the you know, they say, the slow and deliberate progressive march through the institutions by the socialists. Yeah. Yeah, A big check step happened when you had Unitarians and now originally they were Christians. Unitarians. This is what's called a pl political religion, where prior to our independence, if you were to be a leader in America, all you needed was the favor of the king. Now that we're a country where people vote, you need the favor of the people. And so politicians would with each state jealously holding onto their particular doctrines. The politicians would say things that were the most generally accepted. So it was sort of like political rhetoric is the lowest common denominator. You want to appeal to the most amount of people, And so their speeches would just say things that everybody held in common, the majority of the people, and so here where they're mentioning Christianity to them, that was the accepted views of everybody, you know. So the time of the founding, ninety eight percent of the country was Protestant. It's like a tenth of a percent Jewish. And then after the Irish potato famine in the early eighteen hundreds, the Catholic percentage went from one percent to twenty percent

31:10 in just a decade. There was a backlash and then it settled down, and then there was a persecution of Jews in Bavaria. A quarter of a million Jews come across. They go from a tenth of a percent to one percent and then eventually to two percent of the population. But then there was a cholera epidemic eighteen forty nine and the president Zachary Taylor has a day of fasting in prayer. And then there's another potential of the global cholera epidemic, and we were spared. And President Grover Cleveland has a day of Thanksgiving November one, eighteen eighty eight. He mentions that he goes on that day, let all our people suspend their ordinary work and occupations, and in their accustomed places of worship, with prayer and songs in praise, render thanks to God for all his mercies, and be mindful of the afflictive dispensations which are a portion of our land have been visited with this epidemic, while we humble ourselves before the power of God acknowledges mercies in setting bounds to the deadly march of the pestilence. So that was Grover Cleveland. And then we have Benjamin Harrison.

32:27 And on the one hundredth anniversary of Washington's inauguration, he has a day of Thanksgiving April fourth, eighteen eighty nine, and he says, George Washington took the oath of office as Chief Magistrate of the newborn Republic. The impresent Act was preceded at nine o'clock in the morning in all the churches of the city by prayer for God's blessing on the government and its first president, in order that the joy of the occasion may be associated with a deep thankfulness in the minds of the people for all the blessings in the past, a devout supplication for their gracious continues in the future. The representatives of the religious creeds, both Christian and Hebrew, have memorialized the government to designate an hour of prayer and Thanksgiving on that day. So he's been really inclusive, exactly, Benjamin Harriston, He's like, okay, everybody, both Christian and Hebrew.

33:21 That's the whole country Christian exactly, all God, all God's chilling, all hands on deck. You know. It was interesting, you know too, just to rewind for just a moment. You know, here we get the attack of cholera, and you get a day of prayer and Thanksgiving. You know. Unfortunately, after the most recent pandemic here in our country, COVID, I didn't I didn't hear a national day of prayer and Thanksgiving, you know, post the pandemic. By comparison, No, you're right. I actually was working with some people and they were putting together a list of all the days of prayer and fasting, and they staffers around President Trump said, oh, no, this is too much. Let's let's set it aside.

34:10 Let's water it down, Let's do this or that, because basically you had rhinos that had infiltrated the government and they wanted to water this stuff down. But I agree with you that we did not have that return of gratefulness to God. Even when the nine to eleven happened. George W. Bush had a day of prayer and remembrance. Yes, remembrance. Okay, you know, how's that that's not repentance. Previously it would have been prayer and repentance even during that War One, because because they didn't see nine to eleven, just like the children of Israel did not see the attack on their nation as a judgment from God. They defiantly responded that it was of their own strength and their resources, that if they would only do a little bit better job in all these areas of national security without God, then we'd be okay.

35:15 Yeah. You know, there's the Deuteronomy twenty eight passage and the Blessings and Curses. It says thou shall hearken diligent to lead to the voice of the Lord, to observe through all his commandments. All these blessings will come upon the and overtake thee that will be blessed, coming in, blessed coming out. You'll be the head and not the tail. Right, you'll lend them any nations, and you shall not have to borrow. And you know, one of you will put a thousand of enemy to flight. But it says if you do not hearken to the voice of the Lord, these curses will come upon you and overtake you. Exactly. The enemy will come in and rise up above you, and they will be the head, and you'll be the tail, and you'll be a debtor. And lo and behold, America is the most indebt nation in the history of the world. Just financially.

36:02 We're on the judgement side of the page. And then you see the stranger coming in amongst you. So here they're diverting money from the veterans to take care of legal immigrants. It's like, okay, and then we're borrowing. Rand Paul was even saying, Okay, all the money we're giving Ukraine, we are borrowing from China. Exactly. We don't have a pot of money that we're borrowing from right, we're inflating our currency and we're playing all these financial games, but we're borrowing the money that we're lending to Ukraine, and unfortunately they can't borrow any more money from ourselves of security. They've kind of left that empty, you know, pretty much. Imagine if they gave all the money they gave the Ukraine to all the American citizens exactly. I mean, it would be like millions of dollars per person. We would get it's like man, oh man. But instead we're giving it over there and we find out now that a lot of it's going to uh, it's money laundry exactly. Well, and that's what Ukraine does. Did you expect them to do anything different? They are They are money laundering headquarters. They've been that way for decades. That's that's how they think, and that's their model.

37:17 You can't expect them to do anything different. Yeah. I was amazed when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and the US was giving aid to Ukraine. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe. But guess which country was the number one country giving money to the Clinton Foundation? Ukraine? Ukraine worist country given the most amount of money. Where are they getting the money of from the aid that Hillary send us right quit pro quo is what that's called, Nancy Pelosi. Huh yeah. I was even shocked by the headlines where Zelenski took the billions he got from the United States and gave it to Larry Fink with black Rock for safekeep all right to take to account of it for him.

38:02 It's like black Rock. They're the number one World Economic Forum group that wants a one world government. So ere exactly, but anyway. William McKinley was the twenty fifth president and Teddy Roosevelt was his vice president, and he has a national Day of Thanksgiving October twenty ninth, nineteen hundred. This was after the city at Galveston had suffered a hurricane and the country responded with charity, and so McKinley says, the works of religion and charity have everywhere been manifest. We have been generally exempt from the pestilence and other great calamities, and even the tragic visitation which overwhelmed the city of Galveston made evident the sentiments of the sympathy and Christian charity by virtue which we are one united people now Therefore, I William McKinley, President of the United States, to a point instead of part Thursday the twenty ninth, to be observed by the people in the United States as to day of Thanksgiving and praise to him who holds the nations in the hollow of his hand, that they humbly pray for continuance of divine favor, so and so forth. So that was William McKinley. And then there's Teddy Roosevelt after that. If you want to share a little on that, Yeah, let's go. We got about ten minutes left. So Theodore Roosevelt, he's the one who has the charge down in San Juan Hill, Cuba and helps Cuba become independent from Spain. And then he is the twenty

39:37 sixth president, and he has a day of Thanksgiving October twenty fourth, nineteen three, and he says, during the last year, the Lord has dealt bountifully with us. It behooves us not only to rejoice because of what has been given us, but to accept it with solemn sense of responsibility, realizing that under Heaven it rests with us ourselves, to show that we are worthy of to use or arte what he has. Thus been entrusted to our care. In no other place, and in no other time has the experiment of government of the people, by the people and for the people been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country in the opening of the twentieth century. Failure would not only be dreadful thing for us, but a dreadful thing for all of mankind, because we mean the loss of hope for all those who believe in the power to act in righteousness of liberty. Therefore, thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past, we beseech him that he may not withhold him in the future. And so that was Teddy Roosevelt. Now again we talked about the King of England at the beginning, and the most powerful empire in the world. You had democracies like in Athens, but every citizen had to be at every meeting every day to talk about every issue. So democracies could only get as large as a city, so they call them city states. Now republics could get larger because you could

41:12 take care of your family and your farm and have someone in your place that goes to the market every day and talks politics. They are your representative. So you had the Roman Republic. But here Teddy Roosevelt is saying that we're even bigger than the Roman Republic. Right, we've stretched. And he says, in no other place, and at no other time has the experiment of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and try on so fast a scale. But he says, failure would be a dreadful thing, not just for us, but a dreadful thing for all mankind, because it would mean a loss of hope. What's he talking about? Because for six thousand years people have suffered under the thumbs of pharos and Caesars and kayjers, insultants and cons and your worth was only dependent on how well you could serve the guy at the top. And if you weren't serving him, or you were challenging him, well you're stripped of your rights and you're put in the Tower of London or your birth at the steak and you can't even believe what you have to believe what the king tells you to believe.

42:10 I mean, it's total. And so for six thousand years people have suffered, and they thought, if only we could rule ourselves without a king, wouldn't that be wonderful, and in America we did it, and if we blow it, there's nothing left for humanity to look forward to this side of heaven. Then what dictators Chinese dictators even Biden called jezing pingadicators, dictators, Qush dictators, North Korean dictators, Irenian Iatola dictators. It's going to be a gang war on a global scale with the most up to date weapons and tracking technology, and human rights are going to be crushed exactly and there'll be no coming back out of it. And so this is a thing that we want to take is and we want to hang on to this great country that the Good Lord has entrusted us with. Yeah. Amen, Well, Bill Feeder, you know, in going through this timeline, this is so important and it blesses us, you know, for people to realize because this is stuff they probably haven't Yeah, I can guarantee you the kids in school are not getting this kind of information and maybe for some of us who did when we went to school. It's been a while, but it is amazing to look at the timeline and say, you know, here we are nineteen oh three and probably up and including World War Two, we were still a Christian nation. We still held to a biblical worldview, but it seems that shortly after World War Two, we just embraced this, you know, secularist worldview,

43:49 and we really had a culture clash. And it happens so quickly when you think about it. Yeah, it did. Now. During World War two, Eanklin Roosevelt gave out Gideon's New Testaments and book assalms to all the soldiers, millions of blue ones to the navy, brown once to the army, and then right at the beginning, he had a National Bible Week in nineteen forty one, and since then, every session of Congress has designated Thanksgiving Week as National Bible Week. Matter of fact, Representative Mike Johnson on c SPAN, he says, recognizing the seventy seventh annual National Bible Week in America, this is a declaration first made by Franklin D. Roosevelt just weeks before the start of World War Two. But after World War Two, you had Russia, and they had a debate whether communism should just rule Russia or rule the world and rule the world ones one out, and so they would send KGB agents into these brand new countries that survived World War two and they would do critical theory, which all it is is observing all the groups in a country religiously, socially, economically, and you call some victims and others oppressors, haves and have nots exactly, pit them into riots and protests, and then you co opt the media with bribes and threats to blame the new leader of the new country for all of the problems. And when the public opinion turned against the new leader, then you would do a coup or rigged election

45:20 and replace the leader with a Soviet puppet. Wow, and country after country after country fell. Truman does nothing, and then Eisenhower's the next president, and he decides to fight fire with fire, and he has Alan Dulles as the head of the CIA, And when the Iran begins to side with the Soviet Union, he sends over Kermit Roosevelt Junior, and he does the KGV thing in reverse. He recruits mobsters and gangsters and radical e moms and they hit violence and protests and co opts the media to blame Mazedek for all the problems. And when the public opinion turned against him, they put him under house arrest and replaced him with the Shaw who loved America because we help put him in until Jimmy Carter, the show exactly exactly let the Iotola take over and push radical Islam, and the Iatola founded Hesboala. And now we have to thank Jimmy Carter for all these missiles being fired at Israel. Of course we can thank Biden and Obama too for releasing Yeah, there's plenty, there's plenty of blame to go around there. Hey, Bell, I want to go back to for just a moment. We've got about two and a half minutes remaining here. But in regard to Russia, you know, Patten wanted to go in and invade Russia. He was totally against any kind of alliance with Russia. And here we are, we accommodate Russia, and they they really bring in a contagion, a political contagion that you know, as you as you spell this out, that affected the world and ended up you know,

46:52 affecting you know, the the the values of this great American experiment. Yeah, and so Patton wanted to go in, and there is still some mystery as to his car accident that kills Patten. And because yes, he did wanted to go and then you had General MacArthur, and he wanted to go into China and conquer it. And after World War Two, China was really confused and you probably could have conquered it, but instead Harry S. Truman said no, no, no, We're gonna let the United Nations take care of these international things. Well guess what. The United Nations was formed with a communist guy right there in the formation of it making sure that the Soviets had somebody on the National Security Council, and I think his name was Alger Hisss was the person was later outed by Whittaker Chambers as a Communist spy.

47:52 But yeah, MacArthur wanted to go in and take care of The President of the Republic of China, Jen Kish converted and became a Methodist Christian, and he was like opening the doors for China to become Christian. But again, we had people under the FDR's administration, a lot of socialists leaning people had infiltrated into his administration. Not not much has changed, right, I mean, here we are today in the modern era, and it's like we're in a cycle. You know, wash Rent's repeat this is this is It seems like we're stuck here. But I do think if we thank God, you know, if the devil were all we're all powerful, we've all been dead a long time ago. He's not. And Jesus says, wheat and terrors go together till the harvest. Every generation as a crisis, and the crisis is a way of revealing what's really in our hearts. And it's sort of like, you know, we're the bride of Christ, and every romance novel and builds up to a crisis moment where a person is faced with forsaking the all others and choosing the one. But guess what, some people are going to choose the all others. But there's those the rest of us that are going to choose the One. And all we care about is his approval from God, and so in Jesus, so this is a time for us to thank God for the many blessings. And we still the stories we love best in the Bible are what God's people are in a hopeless situation. He

49:25 raises up an eighty year old Moses to stand against the most powerful military in the world, the Pharaoh. He raises a teenager David to stand against this you know, huge monster Goliath, right, and has one hundred thousand Midianites, and he gets thirty thousand Israelites, and God said, too many. Tell everyone everyone that's scared to go home, but three hundred. In other words, God made the odds even worse, right, And so we have to remember that God is all powerful. He exists outside of time. And this human experiment is basically to let uh sorting out of the sheep and the coat. Who wants to be with Godd and who doesn't? Amen so well on this, on this Thanksgiving Day, we're reminded our Redeemer lives right.

50:14 Bill Amen, Amen Amen. Bill, Bill Fetter, my dear friend, the American Minute creator, nationally known speaker, and best selling author and president of Americsearch, Inc. Bill the website they can go to to uh, you know, subscribe to the American Minute and to be in the flow of the no and to receive your history lessons on a weekly basis. Yeah. So it's Americanminute dot com. Americanminute dot com. And one of the books that I talked about is called The Treacherous World of the sixteenth Century and how the Pilgrims escaped it. And so it goes through the first Thanksgiving that the pilgrims had but but American Minute dot com. Thank you, Bill Well, Bill Fetter, thank you very much. Happy Thanksgiving to you, my friend.

50:59 Happy Thanksgiving you and all the viewers you got it our thanks to Bill Fetter, and thank you for sharing a part of your Thanksgiving with us. To be a part of this mighty movement to return to God. Check it out Bill Martinez Show dot com. May God bless you and keep you, May make his face shine upon you, may be gracious upon you and give you his peace. Thank you so much for being with us. God bless Happy Thanksgiving everybody,