Plucking the Eagle's Wings

Plucking the Eagle's Wings

correlating the numbers to the Hebrew alphabet, they spell the Hebrew word hishaphet which means to judge or plead . It was during this time that the Great (Puritan) Migration began. You will recall that the Jewish exodus from Egypt resulted from God's judgment upon Egypt and its tyrant, Pharaoh. Pharaoh's decrees caused the Hebrews to want to leave. In 1628, William Laud was appointed bishop of the Church of England. Laud began immediately to aid King Charles I in suppressing the Puritans. This settled the issue of whether or not the Puritans should remain in England. It was this oppression that caused the Puritans to want to leave. Just as Pharaoh's oppression in Egypt drove the Hebrews to the Promised Land, oppression by the Church of England drove the Pilgrims to their new Promised Land. Peter Marshall wrote in his book The Light and the Glory, "Today we can see what lay ahead of them ... and sense just how extraordinary was the timing of the Puritan exodus. If Laud had not come to power and abetted the King in his drive to bring the Puritans to heel ... there might not have been a Puritan exodus in sufficient numbers to seed America with spiritual freedom." Persecution brought forth a new people into a new nation. Charles I consented to let the Puritans start a colony. Soon after, he was confronted with discontented subjects who pleaded with him to curtail his power. Charles reluctantly consented. However, in 1629, he dissolved Parliament and ran the country by himself, without representation of his subjects. Civil War resulted and Charles I was executed. Perhaps the Hebrew year 5389, meaning in Hebrew to judge The law of God requires that every vineyard be pruned (Leviticus 25:3). If the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were the fruitful vines of the new vineyard, then God required them to be pruned. In 1636, members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker, founded the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Both colonies supported religious freedom and the governmental codes instituted in Massachusetts. The vineyard was pruned and yielded new branches. Connecticut's state motto is: "He who transplants still sustains." The motto refers to a vineyard, since the state seal has three grapevines representing a vineyard! or to plead , had predicted this. The Pruning of the Vineyard

72