What Happened to America? Part 2
by Pastor Don Elmore
August 4, 2013
Scripture Reading: Matthew 13:24-30
The United States: The Background Information of How It Began; The Battle Between the Two Seed Lines
When did the United States begin? Was it “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two when [Christopher] Columbus sailed the ocean blue?” Did he discover America? Well, Columbus didn’t even set his foot on the land that became the United States of America. He landed in four separate voyages in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico (which eventually became an American territory), Cuba, and other islands in the Caribbean and in South America and Central America. So how did Christopher Columbus discover America when he never set “his big toe” on that continent that became the United States?
Some say it was the Jamestown settlement in 1607? Others say the Raleigh Colony that was totally annihilated and is known as the Lost Colony in 1585-6? Others say it was the Plymouth Plantation in 1620? And there are a host of other starting points.
But most will say it was the Pilgrim Christians who came to the United States from England/Holland in 1620 and settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. These settlers were from a Protestant church that was in Holland. They were known as being “separatists” not “integrationist” who came to the new land to be a “city set on a hill.”
The church was originally from England and went to Holland in search of religious freedom. Although they were generously treated by the Dutch and were given freedom of worship, the Pilgrims found that that did not constitute all that was desirable in life. This instinct of separatism was strong within the Pilgrims’ heart and they longed for a land of their own. In Holland they were among people foreign in language and customs and were distressed at seeing their children adopting their foreign customs. They determined again to go on pilgrimages and “…build for themselves new homes far from the vices of Europe and beyond the reach of the long arm of persecution.”
Hearing there was free land across the sea, they decided to face the known dangers for an opportunity to establish a more independent life for themselves and their children. They were an all-white church which came to America for the purpose that they “…might enjoy once more the political and religious freedom which they had lost in their English homes through the tyranny of King James I.”
The Pilgrims placed a great emphasis on their liberty and their status as free men and women. The inspiration for this attribute, which became infused into our organic law, was undoubtedly derived from the Scriptures – being referred to as the “perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25). It was through their new-found “freedom” that they could best be “servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16).
In many instances the Bible points out a sharp contrast between the status of the free from that of the bond or bondservant. Many of our ancestors came to this country under the status of a bondservant being indentured to a free citizen, usually for six years, while learning the trade of his master. This was a principle of the English common law which had originated from Scripture:
Deuteronomy 15:12 “And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.”
Many of the white people who came to the United States came as indentured servants, just like it says in the Holy Scripture. Between ½ to 2/3 of the original American colonists came here, on their own free will, as indentured servants to help pay for their trip. They were white men and women and children. The highest percentage of indentured servants settled Georgia. They served for six years. After their term, they were given 50 acres of land and some tools to begin their time to farm for their own benefit.
When the first seal of the United States was devised in 1777, it bore the symbols of the six white European nations from which the united States had been populated:
- England
- Ireland
- Scotland
- France
- Germany
- Holland
This reveals that these nations were, up to the time of the Articles of Confederation, the ones recognized as being the nations which colonized, established and peopled the American continent. These were all white nations that created America as no other racial element had the know how or spirit of exploration to do so. America was discovered by the white race, it was explored by the white race, and it was settled and colonized by the white race.
The “Mayflower Compact,” written in 1620, the first document of self-government written for the inhabitants of the new continent, was drafted and signed by forty-one adult Christian white males on board the Mayflower.
All State Charters and State Constitutions; The intent of the people or “governing body” to maintain America as a white nation, pursuant to the Organic Law, is resoundingly revealed through the various State constitutions. They have done so by the inclusion of the white race under the provisions for: (1) suffrage, (2) jury duty, (3) holding public office, (4) serving in the militia, (5) also by the exclusion of the colored races from these areas of government.
The “Declaration of Independence—1776,” was signed by 56 delegates of the Continental Congress who were all free white males and who had been elected by the free white males of the thirteen states.
The “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union – 1777”, were likewise ratified by only white delegates of the thirteen states. It authorized the Committee of the States “…to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in each State.”
So, if in the Mayflower Compact, the State Charters and Constitutions, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederacy all maintain and state that this new nation is to be a white nation by and for white people; then what happened?
In “The Constitution of the United States” the phrase “We the people of the United States” are the political body that created our form of government and thus the white man can never be wholly denied the right of suffrage. The Constitution of the United States was written by the white race, for the government of the white race and also for their “posterity.”
As many historians will affirm, any particular culture is merely the outgrowth of the current religion of that society. It also becomes apparent that the Christian nations of Europe were among the more advanced and prosperous cultures in the world. Yet America stands far out in front of any European nation in these areas, even though America was peopled from these very nations. For some reason, Christianity became more prominent and more a part of American ideology.
There are two reasons why American became a greater Christian nation that any of her European sister nations.
Europe was dominated by powerful central church bureaucracy, such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, followers of Marin Luther or John Calvin. Protestantism was the religion of the new nation of the United States of America. There was no all-powerful church established which controlled the thinking and religious practices of the whole people.
Menno Simons (1496-1561), a former Roman Catholic priest, was persecuted by the Romanists for his pursuit of the truth of the Bible. He was a Dutch Anabaptist who left the Catholic Church after he began to read the Bible. He was one of the Protestant Reformers who lead Europe at this time out of the Roman Catholic Church. Many were killed for doing so. And so was Wycliffe, a multitude of followers of Luther, Calvin, Simons and a host of Huguenots, Waldenses, Amish, and many others.
America became the land for the Protestants to experience their religious freedom. They suffered greatly in Europe for their beliefs that were different from the Catholic and Church of England. Followers of Simon, Calvin, Luther and others were the main immigrants to the United States.
In America, the Protestants did not want any one of their different variations of their movement to be the main church in America; Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Lutheran or Congregation, or any other view of Christianity. But they did not mean that there was going to be other faiths that would spring up in this nation; Buddhist; Islam, Jewish or the hated Catholic would not be accepted. They were not going to be a multi-cultural democratic country; but a Christian republic nation.
In America, the people established self-governing bodies to incorporate Christian principles into the government, politics, and laws of society as they had done with their own family governments. Christianity is not limited to the New Testament, but encompasses all percepts in the Bible.
“The truth is that government was established in America not to build monuments, not to tax the workers to support the nonworkers, not to tax citizens of America to give money to foreign and antichristian governments” (strangers and their governments), “not to finance and support abortion, not to control labor, business and industry, but government was establish for the protection of Christians in the practice of Christianity in their families, societies, politics, economics, etc. That was the main purpose of colonial government.”
“In none of the colonial charters, compacts, etc., will one find the false and nonsensical ideas of religious pluralism where the colonists welcomed the followers of all the religions of the world. The legal roots of America are in Jesus Christ and the Christian Faith.”
So, this is how it began. America was a Christian white nation that soon succumbed to the exact opposite—the multi-culturalism of Satan. But how many Jews or Roman Catholics, Quakers, Blacks, Asians, Buddhists, Hindis, Muslims, and women etc. signed the Mayflower Compact? Or the Declaration of Independence? Or the State Charters or Constitutions? Or the Articles of Confederation? Or the United States Constitution? Absolutely none!
And no Jew, Roman Catholic or Quaker signed the Constitution but they had their influence and rejoiced at the ratification of it. No religious test would be given for any office of the federal government which opened the way for these three false religions plus many more in the future to be federal office holders.
And it took 100 years for all the states to join the federal government’s lack of distinction too. This started the process of changing the nation from a Christian whites-only nation to a pluralistic democratic country.
HISTORY OF THE TARES IN AMERICA
Who was the first Jew to come to America? Most think it was Joachim Gans of Prague who was a descendant to noted metallurgist scholar David ben Solomon Gans (1541-1613); who was a Jewish mathematician, historian, astronomer, and astrologer. Joachim was sent to the New World in 1585 to study the copper and iron smelting techniques of the native Indians.
Sir Walter Raleigh brought him to Roanoke Island, North Carolina where he stayed one year to complete his research into speeding the processing of metals necessary to England’s military success. Gans lowered the English smelters from a minimum of 16 weeks (112 days) to purify a batch of copper ore to only 4 days. He went back to Europe after one year. This information was greatly used to teach Britain’s smelters to make new cannons for the upcoming wars.
Remember that at this time there were no Jews in England! In the year 1290 all Jews were evicted from England. And they were not allowed back in until almost 360 years later. That is hard for us to believe but there were no Jews who were in England from 1290 to around 1650 in England! There were actually a very small number of them that were in England but they had to worship in complete secrecy. So Joachim Gans went from Germany to Roanoke for one year when there were no Jews in England.
In 1492 all Jews were evicted from Spain too; it was called the Spanish Inquisition! Jews, Muslims and other heretics to the Roman Catholics’ mind were given three choices to choose from. They were given the choice:
- To give up their heresies and become a Roman Catholic,
- If they didn’t choose to become a Roman Catholic they had to leave the country or,
- If they didn’t choose to become a Roman Catholic or to leave the country then they would be tortured and executed.
Some Jews became crypto-Jews called Marranos; the majority fled from Spain and many were tortured and executed. This lasted from 1492 till 1924. Where did the Jews go?
- The Jews went to the area of the Balkans; Croatia, Macedonia, Turkey and Albania.
- Others went to North Africa; Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia and Egypt.
- Others went to parts of Europe; France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Greece, Sicily, Crete, Yugoslavia and Italy.
- Others went to the Middle East: Lebanon, Palestine (Israeli)
- Others went to South America; Brazil, Columbia, Suriname and Venezuela.
- Some went to Central America; Mexico.
- Others went to the Caribbean Islands; Curacao, Barbados, Haiti, Cuba and Jamaica.
We will concentrate on the Jews who fled to the Caribbean Islands and South America as these places affect the history of America the most. When Christopher Columbus arrived in Haiti, he had an interpreter, Luis de Torres. Luis was one of the first Jews to settle in Haiti. The year was 1492.
Other Jews fled the Spanish Inquisition and lived in the islands of Cuba and Barbados and the country of Suriname. The history of the Venezuelan Jews began in the middle of the 1600’s – a small collection of records suggests that groups of Marranos lived in Caracas, and Maracaibo.
When Portugal retook control of Suriname where a lot of Jews had fled, the King of Portugal gave those who wanted to depart some time to let them settle, and supplied them with 16 ships and safe-conduct to leave for Holland. The Dutch government gave them an opportunity to settle in Recife, Brazil. Many Jews agreed to this opportunity. Once in Brazil many Jews were forced to move into the northern Dutch colonies in the Americas, the Guyana.
Later, when Portugal retook control of Recife several shiploads left Recife in 1654, headed for Holland, to escape the terror. But one of the vessels was captured on the high seas by a French privateer, and after the passengers had been robbed of everything they were put ashore at Dutch New Amsterdam.
When these twenty-three men, women, and children (4 couples, 2 widows and 13 children) landed on the lower tip of Manhattan Island; penniless, bewildered, forsaken; they were ordered to leave by the next ship by peg-legged Governor Peter Stuyvesant.
Why? Because the Dutch believed what the Bible said to do with their enemies. The thrifty Dutch colonists wanted no beggars and blasphemers around, living off the community.
The colonial governor attempted to have the Jews expelled. He wrote a letter to the directors of the Dutch West India Company in the fall of 1654. In this letter he called these people “…the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony to the detraction of your worships and the dissatisfaction of your worships; most affectionate subject.”
Peter Stuyvesant was denied his request for financial reasons. This was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the United States: the Dutch should have evicted these Jews; like most of Europe had done. Many of these same people were invested in the Dutch West India Company. Within ten years the British captured the colony and changed its name to New York. The Jews had been banned from all English lands for about 360 years, but Oliver Cromwell had just lifted this prohibition. “They were then grudgingly permitted to remain, thus becoming, in 1654, the first Jewish community in America”
That community grew slowly, as did the colonial population in general, even after the British replaced the Dutch in 1664, when New Amsterdam became New York. By 1776, although hundreds were fighting in George Washington's armies, there were fewer than three thousand Jews in the newly independent United States, and most of them were Sephardim.
After the American Revolution, however, there was a steady trickle of Jews from central and “Eastern Europe, the Ashkenazim, whose ancestors had not come from Spain, but the Sephardim remained the dominant element. They were religious traditionalists, aristocratic and proud of their ancient lineage, which dated back to the golden age of Spain.
Even in colonial America they were among the aristocracy, with the already ancient date of 1654 as the time of their beginning, and they looked down upon their Ashkenazic brethren not only because they were newcomers, ignorant of the language and customs of the land, but because they worshiped differently in their synagogues, and because they were mostly poor and humble.
Nevertheless they permitted a few of them, here and there, to join their congregations, although they never really accepted them, and the Ashkenazim usually broke away and formed their own congregations as immigration from Central Europe continued.”
About the same time that the one boat load of Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, in about the year 1660, the Caribbean Island of Jamaica southeast of Cuba, became the Jews’ principal haven in the New World. Situated in the middle of the shipping lanes, Jamaica was an ideal base from which to strike at Spanish shipping to revenge its expulsion of the Jews, and engage in contraband trade. Jamaica’s Jews were major players in both activities.
The Great Earthquake of 1692 brought a climatic end to the pirate port when the sea swallowed two-thirds of Port Royal. From an infamous pirate capital, Jamaica, by 1698, had become a sugar island worked by 40,000 slaves, and after 1713, “the center for slave distribution in the Caribbean and North America.” It was then that England’s Royal African Company was awarded by the monopoly right Spain granted to conduct the slave trade with Spanish America.
In America, the first major Jewish settlement in America was in Newport, Rhode Island at the same time Jamaica was the major place of Jews in the New World. The Jewish population increased by a slow rate, the principal immigrants coming from Spain, Portugal and the West Indies. Masonic activity mushroomed during the 17th and 18th centuries. It even captivated some of America’s founding fathers.
Then Jews began to arrive in Newport, Rhode Island first from Recife, Brazil and then Barbados and Jamaica. The oldest Synagogue was named Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island. It was built in 1763. Founding families were Touro, Hays, Myers, Lopez, Hart, Seixas and Rivera.
Moses Michael Hays was brother-in-law of Rabbi Isaac Touro and a prosperous merchant. Hays introduced the Order of the Scottish Rite Masonic Order to America. He was the Grand Master of Massachusetts Masonic Lodge with Paul Revere and a friend of Thomas Paine and he helped organized the King David Lodge in 1769. Hays moved from Newport to Boston in 1780. At the Old Colony House, one of the oldest existing government building in America, in June, 1776, Hays delivered a now famous letter to Rhode Island General Assembly protesting the requirement that Jews sign a Christian test before the holding an office in government.
Colonial Jews were so few in number that their history could be safely ignored were it not for two things. The society they encountered in the colonies offered a welcome contrast to the intolerance and hostility that had characterized the Jewish experience in Europe over the preceding centuries. That alone made the British colonies of North America a remarkable exception in the saga of the Jewish Diaspora.
The American Revolution gave birth to a nation with eventually a Constitution that embraced an unprecedented degree of religious freedom and liberal ideals of democratic equality. The new federal government of the United States was to be utterly blind to differences of religion, allowing all to hold public office in federal elections. Jews had never experienced anything like it in all their 1700 years of Diaspora life.
Previously, the Jews of North America had been sojourners—tolerated, even welcomed, in some places, but not in others. They were known as the “wandering Jews” for a reason. The Revolution, however, had changed the social and political landscape. Jews had overwhelmingly supported the cause of independence and had fought alongside other patriots.
Although the struggle for political rights at the state level would take several decades, American Jews now fell entitled to rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and stepped forward only to fight for them. The new sense of pride and self-assurance was already evident in the 1790’s, during the debates between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, when Jews openly defended themselves against the occasional attacks of the righteous racial enmity of the Federalists writers.
Jews were eager to join in the political life of the nation and to be seen as completely American. They marched in parades celebrating the ratification of the United States Constitution. They had been part of Freemasonry, a movement to which many of America’s founding fathers also belonged, since its inception in America.
There were some who resented the Jews, but almost every religious group in American had its enemies. By the 1820’s, American Jews, although still extremely few in number, felt that they were as American as any other social or religious group. What is more, a large number of other Americans agreed with them.
CONCLUSION
The Spanish Inquisition forced many Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them attacked and plundered Spanish fleets while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding in the New World.
Abraham Cohen Henriques, an arms dealer who used his cunning and economic muscle to find safe havens for Jews. And Moses Cohen Henriques, Abraham’s brother, who helped plan one of history’s largest heist against Spain. In 1628, Moses Henriques set sail with Dutch West India Co. Admiral Piet Hein, whose own hatred of Spain was fueled by four years spent as a galley slave aboard a Spanish ship. Henriques and Hein boarded Spanish ships off Cuba and seized shipments of New World gold and silver worth in today’s dollars about the $1 billion in today’s money.
Moses Cohen Henriques went on to lead the Jewish contingent in Brazil and established his own pirate island off the Brazilian coast. It was called “Treasure Island.” After the recapture of Brazil, by Portugal in 1654, Moses ended up as an advisor to Henry Morgan, the leading pirate of the time. Even though his role in the raids was disclosed during the Spanish Inquisition, he was never caught.
The booty of Moses Cohen Henriques was used to bank-roll the Sephardim of Recife, Brazil. When Jews fled Recife for the West Indies, the Henriquest fortune bank-rolled their commercial enterprises. When Jews started to land on the shores of America, the Henrique’s fortune helped build a nation. Soon Newport, Rhode Island included ship owners from Mexico and Brazil, traders from Peru and Columbia, and ship captains and pilots from Nevis and Barbados. Together their knowledge of New World trade was unsurpassed.
Situated in the middle of the shipping lanes, Jamaica was an ideal base from which to strike at Spanish shipping, and engaged in contraband trade with the main land. Jamaica’s Jews were major players in both activities.
And the Jews were the main players involved in trading slaves in the New World. The owned the ships and they made large profits in this business. Listen to what they say about this:
“They came with ships carrying African blacks to be sold as slaves. The traffic in slaves was a royal monopoly, and the Jews were often appointed as agents for the Crown in their sale.
They [the Jews] were the largest ship chandlers in the entire Caribbean region, where the shipping business was mainly a Jewish enterprise. The ships were not only owned by Jews, but were manned by Jewish crews and sailed under the command of Jewish captains” Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History; Marc Lee Raphael.
“Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French, British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland; where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the ‘triangular trade’ that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses. Which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa?
“Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the late 1750’s; David Franks of Philadelphia in the late 1760’s; and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760’s and early 1770’s dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent” Jews in Colonial Brazil, Arnold Wiznitzer, p. 72-73.
“The buyers who appeared at the auction were almost always Jews, and because of their lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices. If it happened that the date of such an auction fell on a Jewish holiday the auction had to be postponed” A History of the Jews From Babylonian Exile To the End of World War II; Solomon Grayzel.
All through the eighteenth century, into the early nineteenth, Jews in the North were to own black servants. In 1820, over 75 percent of all Jewish families in Charleston and Richmond, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia owned slaves. Almost 40 percent of all Jewish householders in the United States owned one slave or more. The historical fact is less than 5 percent of non-Jewish Whites in the South owned slaves.
Less than 2 percent of whites owned slaves in pre-civil war; while 40 percent of Jewish households owned slaves. Jews were 2000 percent more likely to own slaves than Whites.
Why is there a collective White guilt assigned for the slave trade but no collective Jewish guilt? Most Blacks and Whites do not know that it was the Jew who owned the ships and were the owners of most of the slaves taken from Africa. They were the owners of slaves in South America, the Caribbean Islands and in the United States. Why are Black Americans and White Americans not allowed to know who the primary slave traders and owners were?
The Jews were the merchants of the world. After they were evicted from England, Spain, some Caribbean Islands, Suriname and Brazil they became the pirates of the sea. They avenged Spain for their expulsion by stealing billions of dollars of goods and coins from them.
With this money they funded their settlements in the New World. Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island was a major shipper in the slave trade of the Western Hemisphere. The Jews were the owners and traders of the slave market for several millenniums. Jews were the largest percentage of any of people of the New World who were the owners of slaves. They have done a very good job keeping this a big secret. What a strange story that is not known by most people even in the United States today.
Leave them alone. Don’t root them up with the wheat. You shall know them by their fruit. Then at the harvest gather them up and bind them in bundles to burn them.
Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.
