*To Ruth – may other readers share the awe and excitement you feel when learning the thrilling and providential history of the United States of America.* 

When George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States, he delivered a powerful address containing this singular charge to the nation: 

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency” (George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789). 

The Father of our Country frequently expressed his rock-solid assurance that God had intervened in America’s War for Independence and that He continued to support the patriots in establishing the first free society in modern times by means of the U.S. Constitution. During the most trying time in the Revolution, General Washington wrote to a fellow commander: 

“The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations” (George Washington to Thomas Nelson, August 20, 1778). 

Years after the war, Washington’s belief remained fixed. He wrote: 

“The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf—And it is my earnest prayer that we may so conduct ourselves as to merit a continuance of those blessings with which we have hitherto been favoured” (George Washington to Samuel Langdon, September 28, 1789). 

Washington’s belief was not mere hope or wishful thinking, but evidence-based testimony. He knew that he has been miraculously preserved by God’s invisible hand on numerous occasions. He knew that his army had been supernaturally saved from defeat too many times to be coincidence. The protective hand that shielded Washington was evident long before the Revolution. During the French and Indian War, in the melee of the disastrous Battle of Monongahela, Washington should have died when all other mounted officers around him were hit and killed and he was fired at dozens of times. However, he recorded the following: 

“By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side” (George Washington to John A. Washington, July 18, 1755). 

The Indians who were leveling Washington’s companions were ordered by their chief to gun him down as well. They tried. They all tried. One warrior shot seventeen times, another eleven – all misses. Years later, the old Indian chief felt impelled to meet Washington when Washington was visiting the area. When he did, he gave an intriguing testimony of what happened that day and what was to come for Washington and the new nation he would lead: 

“I am chief and ruler over all my 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 redcoat tribe—he hath an Indian’s wisdom, and his warriors fight as we do—himself alone is exposed. Quick, let your aim be certain, and he dies.’ Our rifles were leveled—rifles which, but for him, knew not how to miss. Twas all in vain; a power far mightier than we shielded him from harm. He cannot die in battle. The Great Spirit protects that man, and guides his destinies. He will become chief of nations, and a people yet unborn will hail him the founder of a mighty nation. I am come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle” (David Barton, The Bulletproof George Washington, 50-51). 

In later battles during the War for Independence, Washington was again spared by fortuitous means. More bullets pierced his clothing, more warriors missed direct shots, and some felt they shouldn’t fire when they had a clear shot. One interesting moment shows how God intervened to prevent Washington being killed. In “The Man Who Didn’t Shoot Washington,” we find the following account of a marksman who had the General in his sights but felt he shouldn’t shoot him: 

“[Patrick] Ferguson and three of his riflemen were ranging far forward of the British lines when they heard the sound of horses’ hooves approaching from the direction of Chad’s Ford. Sinking down in the undergrowth, they looked hastily to their priming as a mounted man in gay hussar dress rode into the open glade directly in front of them, followed a moment later by another rider in buff and blue, mounted on a bay horse and crowned by what Ferguson was afterwards to describe as “a remarkable large cocked hat.” Obviously, he was an officer of exceptional distinction, and there was, moreover, a look about him that seemed peculiarly familiar. The Scotsman, of course, had never seen General Washington in the flesh. But there were plenty of prints and cheap woodcuts of him in circulation. Furthermore, it had been rumored in the British camp that, a few days earlier, Washington had ridden out so far beyond his own lines that a sudden storm had forced him to take shelter for the night at a farm-house hard by Gray’s Hill—almost within cannon shot of British headquarters at Kennett Square. It was more than possible, therefore, that he had again ventured out on one of those personal reconnaissances by which he was always careful to inform himself of the nature of the ground over which he proposed to fight. 

“Ferguson’s first unthinking impulse was to shoot down the two horsemen without more ado; and he signed to his companions “to steal near to them and fire at them.” But almost immediately he signaled them peremptorily to hold their fire. To an experienced gun, raised on the Highland grouse moors in the traditional sporting code, the very idea of taking a shot at a sitting bird was anathema. In his own phrase, even to entertain so shameful a notion was “disgusting.” Furthermore, Ferguson was a typical soldier; and the soldier’s mentality is such that he invariably feels a certain sympathy with the man against whom he is professionally opposed. To attack and overpower him in the heat of battle was all in the line of duty; to play the assassin and shoot him down, all unsuspecting, in cold blood, was not part of the tradition of arms in which he had been raised. 

“There remained the possibility of taking the enemy leader and his companion captive. Stepping from his place of concealment, Ferguson called to the hussar officer, who was the nearer to him, and signaled him to dismount. The only response was an excited cry of warning to the rider in the remarkable large cocked hat, who promptly wheeled his charger and made for the further edge of the clearing. 

““As I was within that distance,” Ferguson subsequently recorded, “at which, in the quickest firing, I could have lodged half a dozen of balls in or about him before he was out of my reach, I had only to determine; but it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual who was acquitting himself coolly of his duty, and so I let him alone.”” 

Doubtless, many discount this as an act of God and would have you believe it is one of the many “coincidences” of the founding era. Yet, the “coincidences” and “lucky breaks” were so voluminous that, as Washington said, you had to be a “bad” man and an “infidel” not to admit the reality. 

Washington knew that only the invisible hand of the Almighty could have preserved him in the heat of battle so many times as enemy shooters aimed point blank at him and missed, as bullets pierced his coat, and as projectiles of death flew around him in flurries. Similarly, he knew that the entire Continental Army was saved multiple times by divine intervention. The narrow escape from Long Island in 1776 comes to mind. 

After being outflanked and surrounded with their backs to the river, General Washington ordered a hasty retreat by boat under the cover of dark. As dawn approached, half the troops – and the General himself – remained trapped as the evacuation progressed more slowly than anticipated. Quite unexpectedly, and fortuitously, a mysterious and uncommonly thick fog blanketed the riverbank, preventing British troops from advancing. The fog lingered just long enough for Washington, in the last boat, to escape. It lifted as Washington arrived at the far bank and enemy troops arrived at the spot he had been with his cornered troops minutes before. 

The historian David McCullough described the incident like this: 

“At the ferry landing all this time troops and supplies and artillery were being loaded aboard one boat after another as quickly as humanly possible and sent on their way. Everyone worked furiously. A Connecticut soldier manning one of the boats would remember making eleven crossings in the course of the night.  

“But the exodus was not moving fast enough. Some of the heavy cannon, mired in mud, were impossible to move and had to be left behind. Time was running out. Though nearly morning, a large part of the army still waited to embark, and without the curtain of night to conceal them, their escape was doomed.  

“Incredibly, yet again, circumstances – fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as it would be said so often – intervened.  

“Just at daybreak a heavy fog settled over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night. It was a fog so thick, remembered a soldier, that one “could scarcely discern a man at six yards distance.” Even with the sun up, the fog remained as dense as ever, while over on the New York side of the river there was no fog at all. . . .  

“Major Tallmadge, who . . . was among the last to depart on the boats, would write later that he saw Washington on the ferry stairs staying to the very end.  

“[Alexander] Graydon estimated that it was seven in the morning, perhaps a little later, when he and his men landed in New York. “And in less than an hour after, the fog having dispersed, the enemy was visible on the shore we had left [behind].”  

“In a single night, 9,000 troops had escaped across the river. Not a life was lost” (David McCullough, 1776, 190-191). 

Military genius or miracle? Perhaps both, but it was certainly a miracle. Who controls the weather? General Washington didn’t control the weather. God controlled the weather then as now and used it to aid the American cause time and time again. 

The great American W. Cleon Skousen wrote of Washington’s concrete surety that America was supported by God, and detailed another miraculous incident involving weather, like this:  

“The record shows that on at least 67 occasions General Washington stated in his reports to the Congress that except for the intervention of God the consequence of those contests would have been different. Every man in that convention knew that these were sometimes manifest in a most spectacular way.  

“As we mentioned earlier, when Cornwallis put 6,000 men in boats to cross the York River and escape from Washington, a tremendous storm came up and blew the boats right back to the shore where the British could be taken prisoner. Cornwallis was led to exclaim, “Even God wants Washington to win!” 

“There were many such instances” (W. Cleon Skousen, The Majesty of God’s Law: It’s Coming to America, 445-446). 

Not only did the weather prevent Cornwallis from escaping defeat and capture at Yorktown, but a massive storm prevented the British fleet from sailing to his rescue. Truly, God wanted Washington and America to win. 

The escape from Long Island, the victory at Yorktown, and so many other incidents, were rightly considered miracles from God by our forebears. So strong was this belief, I remind you, that Washington believed you had to be “worse than an infidel” to not recognized God’s invisible hand in the matter. From miraculous storms and fog to “coincidental” timing and last-minute turns of fate, America’s victory over monarchical Britain was nothing short of God’s will, favor, and blessing. 

Our Founding Fathers saw Heaven’s intervention on their behalf, as did the majority of their countrymen. It is a very modern idea that the establishing of America as a free and independent nation was anything less than providential. The record refutes the idea. 

At the close of the Revolution, when he believed he was retiring from public life forever to the quietude of his farm, General Washington said: 

“I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interest of dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them, to His holy keeping” (George Washington, Address to Congress, December 23, 1783). 

Keep America He did, bringing the Constitution into existence through the Founding Fathers’ wise instrumentality and making America into a safe haven for religious dissenters, the politically oppressed, and all who wanted to be free. He blessed this land with a glorious bounty of resources, wealth, sound institutions, strong men, feminine ladies, big families, industrious people, and Christian virtues. Our Father in Heaven is the true Father of our Country. 

I say it again: The Lord made America great. So long as we have trusted in Him and tried to follow His commandments, He has prospered and fortified us. To the extent that we have gone away from Christ and His laws, to that extent we have fallen, become weak, devolved into wickedness and pride, and corrupted the American dream. We have violated and broken the sacred covenant of this special land, which is that the inhabitants of it will worship Christ or be swept off if they would not repent. 

We have not done what our forefathers did – we have not remembered the Lord. Our gratitude has been poor. We have not lived up to our privileges. We have not defended the rights He gave us. We have not safeguarded the Constitution which He gave through inspiration and which embodies many of the ancient principles of civil government revealed to Moses. We have not been the shining city on a hill our forebears intended us to be. 

What is to be done? How can we remedy the bleak situation? How can we show more gratitude to our God? How can we show appreciation for our God-given rights – for our Faith, Families, and Freedom? 

More than electing a new president, more than trying fiscal responsibility, more than ensuring election integrity, more than ending the Federal Reserve, more than keeping our nose out of other nations’ internal affairs, more than repealing red flag gun confiscation laws, more than instituting term limits, more than keeping dangerous transgenders and LGBT-disturbed individuals out of public schools, more than securing our porous border, more than preventing publicly-subsidized social media platforms from censoring speech, and more than any other thing you can imagine that could help restore our Republic, the most important thing America needs is repentance. 

Only repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, who is mighty to heal and save, can restore us. America will repent or America will perish like ancient Israel. Our great nation, favored and blessed so long by the Lord, will be cleansed without immediate and wholesale repentance in sackcloth and ashes. If we wish America to be great again, we must acknowledge and adore the invisible hand that made her great to begin with. 

If we truly value the Independence we celebrate every year with fireworks and BBQs, we will follow in our forefathers’ footsteps and sing praises to Heaven, raise our voices in humble prayer to our Father above, and repent of our wrongdoings in the name of Jesus our Redeemer. Then, as we manfully stand against tyrants and for Freedom in the American tradition, the invisible hand will work in our favor and for our good. That is true gratitude. That is the way to both spiritual and political salvation. That is America’s only sure course out of these dangerous and turbulent waters in which we are being so violently tossed. 

Let’s ride with the old General to victory once more. Let’s share his faith in the Providence that overshadows us. And let’s forever acknowledge and adore the invisible hand that made us free in the beginning and that has the power to make us free again. 

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1). 

Zack Strong, 
July 4, 2023