I guess when one accepts the likelihood that there is a creator, then we can get into theology. However, I don't think it's possible to have theological discussions in this forum as atheist trolls come in and derail them.
1.In the book of Exodus, we find Moses up on Mount Sinai, when he sees a bush, on fire, yet not being consumed by the flames. Moses has a colloquy with himself, commenting on the incident…actually saying ‘Look at that great thing!’ Only after he comments on the event does God call to him…and he replies ‘Here I am.” The explanation of that passage is that
God wanted him to notice the remarkable occurrence.
2. ✔ Here is one such remarkable occurrence.
The 50th anniversary of independence (1776) was anticipated by the people of this nation, the 'Golden Anniversary'! On that day, July 4th, 1826, remarkably, both Samuel Adams, 90 years old, and Thomas Jefferson, 83, were alive. What are the odds? And what are the odds that these men, having lived to see the 50th anniversary of independence would both die on that day? The people of America recognized that remarkable occurrence as the Hand of God at work.
3. ✔And, another. Prior to the Pilgrims landing, visits by other Europeans resulted in plague that wiped out most of the indigenous inhabitants. In fact, the Pilgrims found empty villages. But one of the residents had remained. This solitary Indian was invaluable to the Pilgrims, teaching them how to plant, hunt, and survive. What made him remain? What are the odds..... Sqanto....one fact about Squanto: he had been to England! And he was there, waiting. And he spoke English! What are the odds?
a. ✔ "Hardly four months after the
Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock.... an Indian reaches your outpost... he opens his mouth. He speaks English! More amazing, he does so with a British accent and the demeanor of someone who had lived and worked among England’s elite.... a Patuxet Indian, associated with the Wampanoag... lured ...onto [a British] ship, ostensibly to discuss the beaver trade. Instead, as
MayflowerHistory.com explains, Hunt kidnapped them to sell them into slavery....“most dishonestly, and inhumanely, for their kind usage of me and all our men, carried them with him to Malaga, and there for a little private gain sold those silly savages for rials of eight.”
... However, local friars sabotaged his scheme. They gained custody of, freed, and Catholicized the remaining Indians, including Squanto. Squanto somehow talked his way to London... Squanto soon found himself bound for Newfoundland,... In 1619, ... Squanto crossed the Atlantic yet again. Destination: Plymouth. To Squanto’s horror, a suspected smallpox outbreak had annihilated his village. Squanto moved in with the nearby Wampanoag, including its leaders, Massasoit and Squanto’s brother Quadequina.
http://www.nationalreview.com/artic...dly-indian-who-dazzled-pilgrims-deroy-murdock
4. And we are encouraged to notice other remarkable occurrences, as well. Too many overlook similarly significant events in the history of this great nation.
When George Washington was 23, he served as a colonel in the Virginia militia. It was 1755, he was assigned to British General Braddock’s army, involved in an ambush at Monongahela. by Indians. To this day, it remains the single worst day in the annals of British military history. Of the thousand man contingent, only 23 escaped. And only three officers survived; only one of them, unwounded. Washington. And what a target he was: 6’3” at a time when the average was 5’5”! Two horses were shot out from under him...and he had four bullet holes in his coat! This was Washington’s comment, he was “protected beyond all human probability or expectation.”
a. Presbyterian pastor Reverend Samuel Davies, in a sermon that very year, 1755, said, “ I may point out to the public that heroic youth Col. Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal [remarkable] a manner for some important service to his country.”
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/washington/ohio.html
b. “The really interesting part was the testimony of a pioneer woman, Mary Draper Ingles, who was captured by a band of Shawnee Indians and held in their village for several months. She overheard French officers discussing the battle of the Monongahela with their Indian allies. An Indian chief named Red Hawk said he had shot at Washington eleven times- claiming his rifle had never missed- and then he ceased firing, convinced that the Great Spirit was protecting him….Washington’s close friend and personal physician, Dr. James Craik, later wrote of meeting an elderly Indian chief who described the same battle in which the Indians ceased firing at Washington because they were convinced he was protected by the Great Spirit.”
"Bulletproof" George
c. A little-known sidelight connected with Braddock's defeat [referring to a battle Washington fought in during The French and Indian War, under a British General named Edward Braddock] was an "Indian prophecy" pronounced fifteen years later by an aged Indian chief. In the fall of 1770, Washington and several other men traveled to the Ohio to examine some of the western lands that had been granted to colonial veterans of the French and Indian War. During that journey the men were met by an Indian trader who "declared that he was conducting a party which consisted of a grand sachem and some attendant warriors; that the chief was a very great man among the northwestern tribes, and the same who [had] commanded the Indians on the fall of Braddock.... Hearing of the visit of Colonel Washington to the western country, this chief had set out on a mission, the object of which [he] himself would make known." After the two groups had arranged themselves around a council fire, the old Indian rose and spoke to the group through an interpreter:
'I am a chief, and the ruler over many tribes. My influence extends to the waters of the great lakes, and to the far blue mountains. I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle.
It was on the day when the white man's blood mixed with the streams of our forest that I first beheld this chief. I called to my young men and said, Mark yon tall and daring warrior? He is not of the red-coat tribe-he hath an Indian's wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do-himself is alone exposed. Quick, let your aim be certain, and he dies. Our rifles were levelled, rifles which but for him knew not how to miss- 'twas all in vain; a power mightier far than we shielded him from harm. He cannot die in battle.
I am old, and soon shall be gathered to the great council fire of my fathers in the land of shades; but ere I go there is something bids me speak in the voice of prophecy. Listen! The Great Spirit protects that man, and guides his destinies-he will become the chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him as the founder of a mighty empire!'
http://lindy1950.tripod.com/washington.html
5. And this.....During Andrew Jackson's second term, he became the first President to face an assassin's bullets. January 30th, 1835, age 67, a gaunt and ill man, suffering from malaria and dysentery, carrying two bullets from disagreements that took place prior to his presidency, attended an official event. A stranger came up to him...within 6 feet, took out a small pistol...BANG! Jackson wasn't wounded! The stranger took out a second pistol and fired....BANG! Again....Jackson wasn't wounded. Jackson went on the attack shouting 'They can't kill me!'
The stranger was Richard Lawrence, a madman. But the pistols were tested by the army, and found that the firing occurred but neither charge ignited! When reloaded....they worked! What are the odds that two pistols misfired?
Jackson, father of the modern Democrat Party....was not meant to die.
6. California is our most populous state. It's history reveals one more episode of the Hand of God in United States history. On February 2. 1848, "... the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo is signed, ending the
Mexican-American War in favor of the
United States. The Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the area that would become the states of
Texas,
California,
Nevada,
Utah,
New Mexico and
Arizona, as well as parts of
Colorado and
Wyoming. "
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed - Feb 02, 1848 - HISTORY.com
The US paid $20 million to Mexico and assume up to $3 million in U.S. citizens' claims against Mexico.
a. Why is the date important?
James Marshall ) was an
American carpenter and
sawmill operator, whose discovery of
gold at Suttter's Mill, in
California, on January 24, 1848 set the stage for the
California Gold Rush. The result was one of the fastest migrations in history: 80,000 streamed to California in one year! Had gold been discovered earlier....would Mexico have signed that treaty? Would the United States have grown so precipitously, an become a world power? What are the odds?
7. Was the nation punished by God for allowing slavery? There was a man who saw himself as an Old Testament prophet....he would often quote his favorite passage, from the Book of Job, 29:17, 'And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth." The man was strange, a failure at everything else he did, but served as a 'vessel of justice.' He attended the funeral of Elijah Lovejoy, American Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois. At the funeral, 'the prophet' raised his hand and vowed that he would destroy slavery. John Brown's aim was to fight to end slavery; "Brown’s men murdered five pro-slavery settlers in Pottawatomie on May 24, 1856 by hacking them to death with cavalry broad-swords." http://www.thetelegraph.com/opinion/columnists/article_6f8815e8-ee38-11e1-85fc-0019bb30f31a.html
a. "John Brown is chiefly remembered today for his assault on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, now West Virginia, in October of 1859. His plan was to capture the firearms and distribute them to slaves, who would then free other slaves in Virginia and the rest of the South. Ironically, the U.S. Marines who recaptured the arsenal for the federal government were led by Union Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, who in just two years would become the Confederacy’s most celebrated general.
Brown was tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. Five days after his sentencing, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a speech in Boston and proclaimed Brown to be a new saint awaiting martyrdom. If Brown is executed by hanging, Emerson said, he will make “the gallows glorious as the cross.” While awaiting execution, a jail guard asked Brown for his autograph. Instead, Brown wrote a short note that predicted the Civil War. “I, John Brown,” the note read in part, “am now quite certain that the crimes of this land will never be purged away except with blood.” Ibid.
In death, he became a prophet.
b. Newspapers throughout the nation filled with his fame...in the North, and in the South...for very different reasons.
c. He refused attempts to break him out of jail..."Some 1800 years ago, Christ was crucified. This morning, Captain Brown was hung. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light." --
Henry David Thoreau.... "Let them hang me," John Brown had written. "I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."
After a life of failure, John Brown was finally a success.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown/filmmore/transcript/transcript1.html
8. The Civil War ensued....and the Battle of Antietam. 'The Army of the Potomac, under the command of George McClellan, mounted a series of powerful assaults against Robert E. Lee’s forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. It is the bloodiest single-day battle in
American history, with 22,717 dead, wounded, and missing on both sides combined.
Battle of Antietam - Wikipedia
For comparison, the D-Day Normandy Invasion resulted in United States – 6,603 casualties (1,465 killed)
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/media/press-releases/d-day-fact-sheet.html
a. This battle was, perhaps, more significant than Gettysburg, as Lee's plan was to attack Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and sever rail connections between the East and West. Then, he could attack anywhere in Pennsylvania, or Maryland, or Washington, D.C. This presented the hope that Britain or France would recognize the Confederacy.
b. Lee's problem was a federal garrison at Harpers' Ferry, behind him...and McClellan slowly following him with a much larger force. But he knew how 'cautious' McClellan was, so he took the chance and split his forces; he sent Stonewall Jackson to attack Harper's Ferry.
c. Then...a remarkable occurrenc: " On the morning of September 13, the 27th
Indiana rested in a meadow outside of Frederick, Maryland, which had served as the site of a Confederate camp a few days before. Sergeant John Bloss and Corporal Barton W. Mitchell found a piece of paper wrapped around three cigars.....The paper was Lee's battle plan, the splitting up of his forces! Now the Confederate plan was clear. He reportedly gloated, "Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home."
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-union-discovers-lost-order
d. Antietam was not a victory for either side....but it ended Lee's plans. Three cigars saved the war for the Union. What are the odds?
9. " The
Battle of Chancellorsville was a major battle of the
American Civil War, ...fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in
Spotsylvania County, Virginia....Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle."
Battle of Chancellorsville - Wikipedia
a. " The victory, a product of Lee's audacity and Hooker's timid decision making, was tempered by heavy casualties and the mortal wounding of
Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to
friendly fire, Confederate troops, a loss that Lee likened to "losing my right arm." Ibid.
b. The loss of Jackson deprived Lee of one of his best generals...and might have made the Battle of Gettysburg, July, 1863, a very different event. What are the odds?
10. April 4, 1865
Lincoln dreams about a presidential assassination
According to the recollection of one of his friends, Ward Hill Lamon, President Abraham Lincoln dreams on this night in 1865 of “the subdued sobs of mourners” and a corpse lying on a catafalque in the White House East Room. In the dream, Lincoln asked a soldier standing guard “Who is dead in the White House?” to which the soldier replied, “the President….he was killed by an assassin.” Lincoln woke up at that point. On April 11, he told Lamon that the dream had “strangely annoyed” him ever since. Ten days after having the dream, Lincoln was shot dead by an assassin while attending the theater.
April 4 - President Abraham Lincoln's prophetic dream about assassination that happened 10 days later | WcP Blog
The above from Michal Medved's July 4, 2013 radio show: "The Hand of God in American History."