When I read these powerful, passionate prayers I said in my prayers my mission would be to let all of America come to know these prayers!
(some items "revolve" in your computer, others... in your mind!)
By the way, click this to watch on SCFilms.com a video depicting a
GW Prayer Warrior All Across America...
- Work Book - Picture Book
Thank you so much, and I pray that these items may bless you.Originally I read about these prayers in two books, one "America: God Shed His Grace On Thee" by Moody Press in Chicago, and the other in "The Light and the Glory" by Peter Marshall Ministries up in Massachusetts. Yet I could not find the a.d. 1919 book "George Washington The Christian" by William J. Johnson in the local Martha Washington Library in Mount Vernon district, the regional library in Mount Vernon - Sherwood Hall, in the entire Fairfax County Library System - the largest in Virginia, or in the City of Alexandria Library a block from where George Washington used to attend Christ Church to pray, and NOT EVEN in Washington at the Library of Congress!!
(After attending the symposium at the June opening of the wonderful exhibit "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" assembled by Dr. James Hutson in a.d. 1998, where I gave Dr. Hutson a copy of "George Washington The Christian" which he said he had never seen before; in August while researching a song called "George Washington The Christian", I discovered the Library of Congress did in fact possess two editions of the book, but they had been misfiled with the music. They are now in the book collections, though we are still debating the proper spelling of the author's name in the Library of Congress catalog system, where there seems to remain an error.)
In a.d. 1995, after finding the book at Princeton (where Washington was miraculously spared harm as he rode between the lines before the victory at Princeton) an Inter-Library Loan search revealed only 158 copies in all the participating libraries all across America. I searched and found old copies but the publisher was out of business, or no longer printing the book. Then I found Christian Liberty Press of Arlington Heights, Illinois that had reprinted the book for their home school curriculum. Over the next year or so, I obtained near two thousand copies of that book, and 250 copies of the penmanship version from Bible Scholar Rusty Maisel of Texas who shortly thereafter went to the Holy Land to further his Bible Studies. I gave one copy of each, the William Johnson book "George Washington the Christian" and the facsimile booklet of George Washington's "Daily Sacrifice" compiled by Rusty Maisel, to Dr. D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries and the Center for Christian Statesmanship, who shortly thereafter gave a fine sermon based on the "Son-day" evening prayer of George Washington.
I gave over 250 to men who attended the massive Promise Keepers Rally on the Washington Mall in a.d. 1997.
At wholesale, I sold copies at a GW Quarter markup over my purchase cost, so sold at a loss when delivery expenses were factored in, to Immanuel Bible Church bookstore, Christ Church bookstore, and eventually even Mount Vernon bookstore, though that was a challenge.
Eventually, even though the book would sell out just about as soon as it was placed on the shelves for sale, the book store manager stopped buying the book. As a volunteer for Mount Vernon, I had met the Executive Director, James Rees, so I prepared a spreadsheet to show how that one little inexpensive book being purchased irregularly in small quantities had earned for Mount Vernon near $1000. Two days later, I received an order for 200, five times larger than any prior order!
(Recently released is a fine new book titled "Washington's God" by American Enterprise Institute scholar and theologian Michael Novak with his daughter Jana Novak, that was written at the request of James Rees. Well done Jim, and the Novaks! In that book the Novaks say many academics miss the mark on understanding Washington because they start from a false premise, that Washington was a Deist, or at best a marginal rather than a devout Christian
in his unshakeable confidence, or faith, in Divine Providence, that is to say,
or as I say, GW - God's Will.)
I also gave one to Dr. Peter Henriques, History teacher at George Mason University at the first annual George Washington Book Festival in February a.d. 1999.
Later that year, at a Teachers Conference at Mount Vernon, Henriques mocked Dr. Kennedy's sermon, and described me as a "evangelical Christian..." which I take as a compliment, yet in the context of the comment his intention to favor me could be questioned.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/henriques/hist615/gwandreligion.htm
Henriques writes:
Recently, at the end of a conference where I was presenter, an evangelical Christian approached me and gave me a book entitled, George Washington: Christian by William Johnson. The young man saw Washington as a fellow believer and wanted to enlist his testimony to spread the Gospel. This is not at all unusual.
Henriques did not get the title quite right, and did not seem to know that at the time I gave him the "George Washington The Christian" book, I had been appointed by Governor Gilmore the previous year to the Mount Vernon Board of Visitors.
And then Henriques continues a few paragraphs below:
The Reverend Dr. James Kennedy, the famous television evangelist, devoted a sermon to the Faith of George Washington, which you were given to read for the institute. Kennedy declares, "George Washington came to a living faith in the Divine Savior. He came to trust in the shed blood of Christ, the perfect life of Jesus Christ, in which he was robed and in which he stood before God…. He prayed that the blood of Christ would cleanse him from all of his sins; that he might be accepted because of the merits, the perfect character of Jesus Christ, and not himself."
Good that the sermons were provided, but what was the context of the related commentary?
Might that be shown by the mocking point to the teachers in his audience at Mount Vernon?:
Such examples could be multiplied many times over [the number of books and articles on GW as a Christian is large indeed], but I think it well to remember "repetition may create certainty in the minds of the hearers and readers, but it does not create truth." [Hughes]
Yet in the a.d. 1999 book "He Died as He Lived" by Peter Henriques, he fails to tell the reader or tell The Washington Post editors who reprinted the image, that the image on his front cover is a woodcut from an illustration with the title "George Washington The Christian". All too convenient anti-faith perspective academic oversight. (see below the a.d. 1907 essay quote by the founder of Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Rev. Herbert Burk that debunks much of what passes as modern scholarship.)
Last year, I heard that Dr. Henriques was coming out with another book with a chapter on the Faith of George Washington, and so I sent him an email offering to be a "peer review reader". He declined my offer. When I then revealed to him what he did not previously know, that I was Mount Vernon Board of Visitors member and the "evangelical Christian" who gave him the book George Washington The Christian, I asked him if he had read it (in the six years since I gave it to him), his reply was, "I have it on my shelf." which is a Clinton-esque answer.
To Grizzard's credit, in a rare instance of academic honesty among his historian colleagues, his book also includes an a.d. 1907 essay by Rev. Herbert Burk, the man who founded the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, that also supports the authenticity of the GW Prayers. When on Labor Day a.d. 2006 outside the Chapel of Washington and Lee University, I asked him "Why?", he said Rev. Burk's essay makes HIS point because the essay is so extreme. Extremely correct? Grizzard's answer baffles me.
So...you read, you review, you pray, you decide.
Then YOU WRITE? Please Click on the "Comments" word link below and write your views on the question. Thanks, and I pray you and your family will be blessed by these GW Prayers.
- Work Book - Picture Book
The compiler of this book of Washington's Prayers is not a penmanship expert. So not knowing the authenticity of these prayers in the penmanship of George Washington, this author took them back in a.d. 1997 when I first discovered them to an antique documents dealer in Old Town Alexandria who serves Mount Vernon as an evaluator of Washington writings that come available, and after losing a previous letter, went back to him in July a.d. 2005, whereupon he wrote for me a brief note on his letterhead saying,
"This letter is to attest to the fact the handwriting shown in copy in the prayers of George Washington, is written in the hand of George Washington c. 1752. and is typical of his script. Gary Eyler July 5th, 2005."
Printed below is OLD COLONY SHOP 16th - 19th Century / Paintings - Prints - Maps - Documents / Recognized Authorities on Art, etc.
1 comment:
Having re-read the Burk essay, I agree that it supports the authenticity of the prayers being written by George Washington.
Post a Comment