Transcript

Stephen McDowell: In October, we celebrate Christopher Columbus Day

>> Stephen McDowell: Welcome to America's Providential History Podcast, where we talk about the real story of America and explore the hand of God in our history. Now, here's your host, Stephen McDowell. Hello. I'm glad you're joining us for this edition of America's Providential History Podcast. Now, last week we took a brief pause between our at a Look at God's Hand and the founding of America. We had been working our way chronologically from the colonization period gotten up into the 1800s. And we took a pause to go back and take a look at this man, Christopher Columbus. Because October. In October, we, recognized Christopher Columbus Day. We used to celebrate Christopher Columbus Day. And so we looked at what motivated him in the last podcast, and it's conclusive from what he wrote is that it was the Lord who put into his mind he could feel his hand upon me the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. So it was his Christian faith, his desire to propagate the gospel, that was the primary thing that motivated Columbus to do what he did. Now, we mentioned how in recent times, Columbus has begun to be not looked as at, at as a hero, but as an oppressor. And so we've had many people lambast Christopher Columbus and say what a rotten guy he was for a whole lot of different reasons that he enslaved the Indians, he took their gold and killed many of them and did many other things. And, and so few years ago, you may remember that, people began to tear down a lot of statues of Columbus and other heroes of the faith in America. And in Richmond, Virginia, they tore down a statue, Christopher Columbus and tossed it in a lake. And these activists said that they were doing that because they were standing in solidary solidarity with indigenous people. Well, well, had these people been taught true history, not a revisionist history with Marxist ideology, they would have learned that Columbus was not an oppressor, but he was really a liberator. In fact, Columbus rescued untold thousands of peaceful Arawak natives from the cooking pots of the brutal, cannibalistic Caribs. Now, during his exploration of the Caribbean islands, Columbus encountered many different native tribes, some peaceful and some vicious. Now, the Caribs were especially feared by the Arawaks and other natives. These were the peaceful Indians, he countered, since the Caribs were cannibals who regularly attacked and captured their peaceful neighbors. The physician. During Columbus's second voyage, a gentleman by the name of Dr. Diego Alvarez Chanca describes an encounter they had with the Caribs on Guadalupe Island. They asked some native women prisoners what the islanders were like who lived there. And these prisoners said they were Caribs and were glad to learn that the Europeans abhorred such kind of people who ate human flesh. And so the Dr. Chanka wrote, they told us that the Carib men use them with such cruelty as would scarcely be believed. And that they eat the children which they bear them, only bringing up those whom they have by their native wives. Some of their male enemies as they can take away alive, they bring here to their homes to make a feast of them. And those who are killed in battle, they eat up. After fighting is over, they declare that the flesh of man is so good to eat that nothing can compare with it in the world. This is quite evident for the human bones we have found in the houses. Everything that could be gnawed had already been gnawed so that nothing remained but what was too hard to eat. In one of the houses we found a man's neck cooking in a pot. So, so here it is, Columbus during his second voyage. They went to an island, encountered an island and talked to some native, women that were prisoners. These were peaceful Indians had been captured women, and they became their prisoners. And they were asking them about what are the people like, the natives that live here, these Caribs? And they were telling them they're cannibals, they eat human flesh, they eat us. And so he's explaining, he's giving a first hand account of what they saw and what these captive Indians were saying. He goes on to write and their war is on the inhabitants of the neighboring islands. These people capture as many of the women as they can, especially those who are young and handsome and, and keep them as body servants and concubines. And so great a number do they carry off, that in 50 houses we entered, no man was found, but all were women. Of that large number of captive females, more than 20 handsome women came away voluntarily with us. Now, why would they capture just the women? Well, the doctor reveals and tells us why when the cherubs take away boys as prisoners of war, they remove their organs, fatten them until they grow up, and then when they wish to make a great feast, they kill and eat them. For they say the flesh of women and youngsters is not good to eat. Three boys thus mutilated came fleeing to us when we visited the houses. So they're given first hand testimony these Caribs were cannibals. And that they had for who knows how long, for generations and generations. They would attack and capture these peaceful Indians, the Araraks and others, and they would roast them up and cook them particular. They take the women and use them to have babies so they can raise up the babies and eat them. Another man on that voyage, Michael, confirmed these Carib atrocities, writing the Caribs, whenever they catch these Indians, eat them as we would eat goats. And they say that a boy's flesh tastes better than that of a woman. Of this human flesh. They are very greedy so that to eat of that flesh they stay out of their country for six, eight or even 10 years before they repatriate. And they stay so long whenever they go that they depopulate the islands. By the way, I'm reading, the doctor's letter is quoted by in a book, Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible, New York Saturday Review Press of 1974. And the, Michael DeConio's letter from this was from 1495, is reprinted in Samuel Elliot Morrison's Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, published by Heritage Press in 1963. So these are first hand accounts of people who were there, who saw these things, who were testifying to the atrocious behavior of the Caribs. So Kuneo also says that the cherubs are largely sodomites and that accursed vice may have come to the other natives through them. Now, when Columbus first heard stories from the Arawaks and others of how the Caribs captured, tortured and ate them, Columbus could not believe it. But after speaking to many Arak prisoners and observing firsthand evidence, he became convinced. So he was even thinking, this is so unbelievable, their repulsive behavior of what they're doing, of cannibalizing people. And as Cuneo reports, these Caribs were largely Sodomites as well. You know, when you engage in evil behavior, all restraints are off and all kinds of evil things, atrocities that you will commit. And so these Arawak, prisoners, were. When Columbus and his men came to this island where they were held captive, they went with them gladly. They were liberated from their captivities. They weren't being oppressed by Columbus at all, but they were being liberated by Columbus. Now it happened that the Caribs attacked Columbus's men as they were there. And in response, the admiral sent a punitive force against them, fought against them and captured 1600 Carib prisoners in the fight. Well, obviously the Arawaks welcomed the defeat of their enemy. I don't think many people would like to be captured and, and fattened up to be cooked in the pot or used as a woman to use to produce a food supply. So they were thrilled that their enemies were defeated and were captured. And they said, they told, Columbus said, destroy all of them. These are wicked, evil men that have been oppressing and killing us for generations. Get rid of all of them. Well, Columbus actually wanted to try to Christianize these brutal men and civilize these brutal men. So he said, okay, Let me take 550 of them. I'm going to carry them as prisoners to Spain with the hopes of civilizing them, with the hopes of introducing them to the only thing that can transform such evil behavior, and that's the Christian faith, Christ Jesus and the power of the spirit of God. Now, another 650 were given to the local natives. They said the natives wanted to kill them all, but Columbus said, no, I'm going to take some with me. 550. These 650, I'll leave with you. You can do whatever you want with them. And they did execute their own brand of justice against those evil men. They were terminated. And then the remaining 400 were set. And so Columbus delivered the peaceful Arawaks from the future brutal actions of their evil enemy, saving many lives from slavery and from the roasting fire. And so we see, contrary to what modern protesters or academics or whoever is promoting this idea, Columbus was a horrible guy because, oh, look, he, he enslaved over 500 men. And we can read about it and how he took them back. But. But these 500 men, actually, their lives were saved because if they had been left to the justice of the Arawaks, those that they had imprisoned, they would have all there been terminated. In fact, this would have been appropriate, just action because they had murdered so many. but in just action, to require the life of all the lives that they've taken.

Christopher Columbus was not an oppressor, he was a liberator

But Columbus actually displayed a huge amount of mercy, huge amount of desire, recognizing the power of the Christian faith to transform them. He was going to give them an opportunity to experience that transforming work. had he left them there under the control of the Arawaks, these peaceful, natives who had been brutalized by the Caribs, they would have all, met the fate of death. And so Columbus was actually the liberator. He was not the oppressor. He liberated these individuals. And so this is what we ought to be teaching. Yes, maybe he did enslave some people, but that in itself was, an act of mercy. You know, so often, a lot of times, and there's many other examples of this, we may cover this in future podcasts that, a distorted image of the truth is put forth with a means of degrading individuals. In particular Christians who came and settled America. They, in modern Marxist, secularist individuals, try to paint them in a negative light, try to talk about how oppressive or evil or mean that they were. And so they take a grain of truth, they surround it with a bunch of lies and distortions, like this example of Columbus, because you may even have heard, oh, he enslave these people. But when you hear the rest of the story, you begin to get a better understanding. Okay, now I see what happens. Columbus really wasn't an oppressor. Columbus was a liberator. Now, we discussed in the podcast last week, Columbus had problems. He carried with him seeds of religious and civil tyranny. and, he had ideas that needed to be, to be, changed and transformed. But he was a reflection of the age and culture in which he lived. And that culture, that age of Western Europe in the late, around the year 1500, needed to be transformed. And so that's why God went to work during the 1500s and sent the Protestant Reformation to bring about a transformation that would contribute to the advancement of liberty in mankind, as One historian writes. B.F. morris writes of God's providential hand at work during this era, the 1500s. He said, no era in history is more signally and sublimely marked than that of the discovery and Christian colonization of the North American continent. The intervening century was in many respects the most important period of the world. So he's talking about, all right, Columbus discovers the New World. Yes, he's motivated by his Christian faith. Yes, he helped liberate many who had been oppressed, but he still carried ideas and reflected things that, needed to be changed. There were still weeds mixed in with the good fruit, and God wanted to prepare a different seed. And so this is what he's referring to, this era in history, the 1500s. and he goes on to say, the intervening century between Columbus's discovering the New World, opening up to colonization, to Western Europe, and the planning of the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown in 1607, that intervening century was in many respects, respects the most important period of the world, certainly the most important in modern times, more marked and decided changes affecting science, religion and liberty occurred in that period than had occurred in centuries before. And all these changes were just such as to determine the Christian character of this country. Meantime, the God held this vast land and reserve as the great field on which the experiment was to be made. In favor of a civil and religious liberty. He suffered not the foot of Spaniard or Portuguese or Frenchman or Englishman to come upon it until the changes had been wrought in Europe, which would make it certain that it would always be a land of religious freedom. And so Columbus played an important part, certainly, in settling of Western hemisphere, but an important part in the settlement of the United States of America. And we've looked at that in past podcasts. I invite you, if you haven't, to go back and listen to those podcasts. But what I wanted to highlight here is God used this man, Columbus, a flawed man, a man with problems, but a man who had a sincere heart to serve God. He used him m specifically to liberate individuals who were oppressed by the cherubs, these cannibals, these perverted, wicked, men. He used him to liberate so many of them. But in a larger sense, he used him to open up the new World. And after God prepared the seed during the Protestant Reformation of the people of the Book, that they then came and planted what became the United States of America. And as I said in past podcasts, we looked at the planting of the seed and the growth of that seed. Then we looked at the birth of the American Christian Republic with our independence in 1776, our new form of government, the US Constitution, which went into effect in 1789. In the last few podcasts, we've looked at the good fruit that began to come forth in this unique new nation. And we also looked at the need for God to send revival to keep the flame of fire in the hearts of the people, so that, we might continue to advance and flourish. And so we're going to pick up that story next week in our next podcast in the next few weeks. And we're going to look at good seed that produce good fruit. But we're also going to begin to take a look at some bad seeds that began to be planted during the 19th century and how some of those bad seeds over generations kind of grew and in more recent times have produced bad fruit. So I hope you can join us next week. I invite you to Visit our website, providencefoundation.com to read articles and look at videos, pick up copies of our books and materials so that, you can educate yourself, further. But each year when we come to October and celebrate Columbus Day, I hope you have a better understanding of why here, as a man, we can celebrate. This is why we named the District of Columbia after Christopher Columbus and cities and many other things. And built statues to honor this man because he was used of God to help advance his story. Well, God bless you. Hope you can join us, next week.