As Jamestown has been unearthed through archaeolgical discovery, there is biblical significance to the unearthing of the Christian foundations of our nation. Graves are being discovered in graves which had to be hidden from the Indians. We are walking where our forefathers walked. (Note: the tourist site which has a recreation of the fort is not the original Jamestown site, but the island nearby is being excavated and parts of the original settlement are being re-created.)

We need to see these things as Gilgal stones of remembrance with great significance. It was not brought to these shores by the Spanish or Vikings. The treasure that came to these shores had been hidden from the English-speaking world until shortly before they came: the Geneva Bible. It’s content is important because it helped transform a people who lived in the Stone Age and came with starving men on three little boats, and built the most amazing culture the world has ever known. It can change the course of nations. If we lived and understood what the Bible says, it can change the course of this society in decades. The world lived without God’s word available to most people in their own language for 5000 years.

It changes pagan barbarians into civilized people. Civility is a word which means “giving up your pagan ways.” When a society becomes Christian, it gives up sacrificing people (as the Visigoths and Picts once did). Into the 16th century, England was a backwater nation, unwashed, illiterate, but in one generation a transformation took place as God’s Word was made available to common people through the Puritan movement. They would listen to sermons for hours and want more.

The price that was paid: the shedding of the blood of the martyrs. In the 1300s the plague killed half the population. A student at Oxford begged to be saved and promised to serve God—John Wycliffe. He was the one who said the government is of the people, for the people, and by the people…based on the Bible. He said the top-down structure with the Pope and King having so much power was wrong, that Jesus was Lord over both. He was a marked man for saying this, but the people loved him and became his followers (Lollards). There was a transformation which took place in those who heard his teaching. He was convicted of heresy, but an earthquake happened in the middle of the trial, so they put off his execution in fear. He became more radical, writing 200 books in the last 5 years of his life. The queen mother was converted and brought in her troops to protect him. He died during preaching of a stroke. His followers died for their faith and it spread to eastern Europe to John Hus, where millions were converted. He was forced at 38 to a council where he was burned at the stake, and his body was thrown in the Rhine River. The faith spread upriver to Germany where Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation, which brought people back to the Book, teaching that anything against that book was not true.

The world was transformed. The light spread to England where William Tyndale at Cambridge became the greatest biblical scholar of all mankind. His translation is today still followed by leading scholars (most of KJV comes from it). He was captured by Henry VIII who was responsible for 40,000 deaths in England, including Tyndale who was burned at the stake (the faggots smoldered and didn’t light, so he prayed for the king, and the executioner had to choke him to death). Guess the rapture’s coming . But it hasn’t for 500 years, though Christians have been willing to lay down their lives. The wrath of man praises God and he visits retribution. You don’t break God’s law, God’s law breaks you, as it did Henry VIII who became a blubbering mess by the time he died. He became leader of church of England because his Lutheran wife told him he needed a Bible of his own. He got Tyndale’s Bible and others were allowed to have it, thus doing away with the divine right of kings. The Bibles were chained to the pulpits, though.

His son at 9 years old became king, a devout Christian who learned from John Knox. Then Bloody Mary tried to bring back the church of Rome, burning 300 men of God and exiling 800 scholars to Geneva, learning from John Calvin, a burden which was a blessing. They wrote a Bible which had chapters and verses in modern English, in modern readable type, with study note: The Geneva Bible.

Those who did not survive the persecution remind us of those who died in Jamestown whose names we have forgotten: they had a significant role to play as much as those who are heralded. They are unsung heroes. Ridley in England was Archbishop, put on the stake speaking to Bishop Latimer who was also being killed: “Play the man. This day we will light such a candle in England as will never be put out.” Because people were willing to play the price, God’s Word spread.

Uniqueness of this Bible: First English Bible to be translated from the original sources and languages, not Latin. First translation printed in easy-to-read Roman type. First Bible to qualify as a study Bible full of notes from foremost scholars of the era. (This included saying that it was all right to disobey the king if he requires you to do something sinful (like kill your children), and King James banned it because of that.) First to mark chapters and verse numbers. First to be printed in a small quarto edition and affordable…every pilgrim family had a Geneva Bible in the center of the home and life. It cost two years wages and they were willing to pay it, it was their treasure. Its impact was that it made the English into biblically-based people even though they weren’t all Christians.

The Bible is why Jamestown is important and unique. It is the foundation. It is what we need to have as our foundation when we rebuild. The firsts of Jamestown: The first colony with an evangelical vision built on the Word of God. On his deathbed, John Calvin said that whatever resistance we see to the truth, our Lord will come through and make a passage for His Word. This was the vision of our forefathers. Jamestown was also first successful English settlement in North America. He kept the foundation of this plantation as weak as it was so that others from Europe had hope that they could make a home in the New World, sharing a common reverence for God’s Word. First settlement in world to develop a permanent Protestant church, away from the chaos of Europe (the church structure in still in place). First to establish representative government, creating a House of Burgesses to make laws in the colony, the pattern established by Sir Edwin Sandys who understood that God is King because he knew God’s Word. The only thing that separates us from the tyranny and poverty of the world is the Word of God and obedience to it. May God remind us that it’s His Word that gives us blessing. We are not wise enough to do it on our own. The first place with the practice of free enterprise, because of understanding the biblical concept of self-government. When women came this was especially true as the men had someone to live and die for.

Christians today need to see God’s Word as their life’s blood, that we should center our lives around it. How many of us have lost our first love? Remember from whence thou hast fallen, repent, and do the deeds you did at first. Are we loving God’s Word, telling it to our children? Is it our priority? We should know it and love it because it helps us have a loving relationship with Jesus Christ. Reformation and renewal comes from our hearts. Each of us in called and commissioned with a special purpose which we can only find in the Word of God, by reading and obeying it, and God will work out His will in our lives. Our nation needs an army and remnant of believers who live this way. William Bradford told his congregation: “I send you out as an army with banners!” We must go out confidently, changed by His Word, not just by knowledge of facts.