Michael Medved Brings Back Early America's Many Miracles
WASHINGTON--Most people know Michael Medved as a radio talk-show host, but he’s also a history buff deeply concerned about America’s cultural drift away from its spiritual and moral roots.
He tries awakening people to how godly and divinely-touched those roots are in his 13th book, “The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic.”
The host of “The Michael Medved Show” is also out to awaken his countrymen to the fact that there have been so many miraculous acts of divine intervention at key, crucial moments of U.S. history, it’s hard to say they were all coincidences, happenstance or plain, dumb luck.
In an interview with CBN News, Medved explained, “’The American Miracle’ tries to recapture the sense that all of our great leaders have had in the past: that America is no accident; that America has been specially blessed.”
Weird Weather Saves the Continental Army
He documents many of those miracle moments and divine happenings in the book. For instance, the way weird weather rolled in at just the right moments to save vastly outnumbered, outgunned colonial forces at least twice during the Revolutionary War.
In March 1776, General George Washington had sneaked his men and cannon unseen into commanding positions over the British forces occupying strategic Boston.
The Brits seriously outnumbered the Continental Army and planned a nighttime assault to swat away the Yanks and their cannon. But all of a sudden a fierce storm with hurricane-like winds and freezing rain ripped into Boston. It mauled the ships that would have put the British troops into their assault positions.
Even if they could have gotten close to the heights, though, the slopes had become so frozen and slippery, the English forces couldn’t have actually ascended them. They gave up the attempt, packed up and fled Boston altogether.
Fateful Fog
A fog in August 1776, wildly unusual for the time of year, covered Washington and his army just in time and just long enough for them to escape destruction after a disastrous defeat on Long Island. They had faced a massive force of British troops and warships that could easily destroy them and probably the colonies’ dream of independence if the Yanks couldn’t escape across the East River.
“Washington makes a daring gambit. He’s going to try to get the troops rowing across on little boats all night in the middle of the night. And very conveniently, they had this dense fog, which no one had seen before in August,” Medved explained. “The fog came up and people, including on the British side, thought it was divine intervention.”
Also as crucial as this blessed fog were nearby winds that whipped up so powerfully they literally kept the English warships from sailing up the East River close enough to shred the fleeing forces with thousands of cannon.
Medved said, “People at the time, including religious skeptics, hailed this as God’s Hand.”
3 of Independence’s Fathers Die on The 4TH OF July
Medved goes deep into the details of how Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the two Founding Fathers most closely involved in creation of the Declaration of Independence, each died on the very same day: the 50th anniversary – the Jubilee celebration – of the 4th of July, the day of America’s independence.
In Adams' case, as he lay dying, the cannon of his hometown Quincy, Massachusetts, blasted away nearby to celebrate that 50th 4th of July. And then huge lightening-filled clouds blew in and heavenly thunder boomed away in harmony with those cannon. Medved recounts how those there called it “the artillery of heaven.”
Of Adams’ death, Medved writes, “The breathing stopped shortly after six o’clock, with a resounding clap of thunder at the very moment of the great man’s passing. Witnesses insisted that at the same instant, a sudden burst of light from the declining sun pushed through the looming clouds and spilled into the upstairs room like a benediction.”
Medved recounts the reaction of Adams’ most famous son to the incredible timing of his father and Jefferson dying on American liberty’s 50th anniversary, writing, “It could not be mere coincidence, John Quincy Adams declared in his diary, but rather ‘visible and palpable marks of Divine Favor, for which I would humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the ruler of the universe.’”
Oddly enough, five years later to the day, a third of these mighty revolutionaries for liberty – James Monroe - also drew his last breath on the 4th of July.
The odds of three of the first five presidents all dying on the 4th of July are about fifty million to one, according to an odds-maker that Medved quotes.
Truly “Golden Timing”
In another chapter the talk-show host tells the strange tale of a State Department clerk who ended up negotiating against his own government’s will with the Mexicans to end the Mexican War and for the U.S. to take possession of California.
Medved explained, “President Polk fires him. He does a Trump: ‘you’re fired! Go home.’”
But Nicholas Trist was obsessed with America making peace and getting California. He refused to stop negotiating, and actually managed to seal the deal with the Mexicans.
“They signed the treaty February 2nd, 1848. That same week, they discover gold (in California),” Medved stated.
He commented that even Abraham Lincoln later discussed this amazing happening that sent hundreds of thousands of Americans racing to the Far West, firmly establishing America as a true coast-to-coast power.
Medved explained, “The gold was in the ground for thousands of years, probably millions of years actually, and it’s only discovered at the moment that this becomes part of the United States! The chapter for that title is ‘Golden Timing.’”
Medved’s “American Miracle” covers such divine moments from the Mayflower and the Pilgrims all the way through Lincoln and the Civil War.
From Doubter in The Divine to Divine Instrument
Though Lincoln was a snarky agnostic as a young man, Medved writes of how Honest Abe came later to a deep belief in God.
Even as the nation was fracturing over slavery, at his first Inaugural he expressed hope war could be avoided by “intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.”
Lincoln came around to acknowledging God cared about America and intervened over and over again in its destiny and used Lincoln himself as an instrument in His divine plan.
Medved told CBN News Lincoln was far from alone in that steadfast belief.
“When it comes to this divine plan that America has clearly been part of, all of our Founders knew it was there,” Medved stated. “They didn’t see themselves as its authors. They saw themselves as its instruments. And I think this is the kind of servant leadership that we desperately need in the country today.”
In “American Miracle,” Medved quotes what Lincoln told his hometown Springfield, Illinois crowd on a cold February day in 1861 as he boarded a train that would take him away to the nation’s capital and soon-to-come bloody Civil War.
The newly elected leader said, “I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail.”
