Plucking the Eagle's Wings

Hebrew Parallels Associated with Early American History

reawakening English efforts to colonize. She and her courageous explorers prepared the way for growing English influence, including its freedom-based views of government. I believe that, through the efforts of Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh, God remembered His oath to plant a vineyard that would yield spiritual fruit one day. Jamestown or Jacobstown "Propagating the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages living in these parts to human civility and to a settled and quiet government..." (Source: Preamble of Virginia Company Charter, King James I). This preamble indicates that the purpose of the Virginia Company was indeed noble as its authors proclaimed their desire to take the Gospel of Christ to the natives. They promised the settlers that they would enjoy "all liberties ... to all intent and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this our realm of England." Americans today owe a debt of gratitude to those who supported freedom. Although the charter articulated the promise of freedom and the goal of taking Christ to the natives, other selfish ambitions manifested almost immediately upon landing on the banks of the James River. In December 1606, three ships left England for the New World carrying 144 men. Among them was a minister named Robert Hunt. In May 1607, they sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and up the James River for about forty miles. Finally, on May 14, 1607, they landed on the spot that they named Jamestown. It is fascinating that the first English colony in America was founded on the very same day on which the modern nation of Israel would be founded 341 years later, on May 14, 1948. King James or King Jacob The settlement was named Jamestown after His Majesty, King James I. This was the same King James who commissioned the translation of the Bible into English, hence the 1611 King James Bible. The name James is the English version of the name Jacob, or in Hebrew Ya'akov. Jacob, the son of Isaac, was the father of the twelve tribes of

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