Thanksgiving Proclamations by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, & more – American Minute with Bill Federer
During the days of America’s founding, colonies would declare:
- days of prayer when times were bad;
- days of fasting when times were real bad; and
- days of thanksgiving when things turned around.
This developed into many colonies, like New Hampshire and Massachusetts, having annual days of fasting, often on Good Friday.
This is evidence that colonists were not “deists” who believed God set the laws of nature in place and then let everything run on its own.
America’s founders believed in a living relationship with God where:
- if people sinned, He would call them to repent;
- if they did not repent, He sent judgment; and
- then when they repented and believed, He would send deliverance, health, and blessings.
This was expressed in Deuteronomy 28:
“If thou shalt HEARKEN diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments .. all these BLESSINGS shall come on thee, and overtake thee …
But … if thou wilt NOT HEARKEN unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments … all these CURSES shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.”
In 2 Chronicles 7:14, the Lord promised:
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
During a threaten war, Ben Franklin published a proclamation of a General Fast in the Pennsylvania Gazette, December 12, 1747:
“The calamities of a bloody war … seem every year more nearly to approach us … and there is just reason to fear that unless we humble ourselves before the Lord and amend our ways, we may be chastised with yet heavier judgments.
We have … thought fit … to appoint … a Day of Fasting … to join with one accord in the most humble & fervent supplications that Almighty God would mercifully interpose and still the rage of war among the nations & put a stop to the effusion of Christian blood.”
Thomas Jefferson drafted a Day of Fasting for Virginia in 1774 to be observed on the day British ships blockaded Boston’s harbor.
“With apprehension … from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston … whose commerce and harbor are … to be stopped by an armed force, 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 and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition.”
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