Thanksgiving is around the corner. That holiday is an annual reminder of our nation’s Christian roots, our godly heritage. Although Virginia rightfully proclaims that the first Thanksgiving was in Jamestown in 1619, not in Plymouth in 1621, the Plymouth one became the prototype of our annual celebrations.

President Lincoln was the first to declare Thanksgiving as an annual holiday. George Washington was the first president under the Constitution to declare a national day of Thanksgiving.

However, Samuel Adams, with the help of two other Continental Congressmen, was the first to declare a National Day of Thanksgiving for America as an independent nation.

The time was the fall of 1777. Overall, it seemed that things were not going well for the United States. Americans lost the Battle of Brandywine on September 11. Dr. Peter Lillback is the founder of Providence Forum, for which I am privileged to serve as executive director, since Lillback donated this organization to Coral Ridge Ministries. Lillback notes that the disastrous defeat at Brandywine was our “first 9/11,” if you will.

George Washington saw that the Brandywine defeat meant the impending fall of Philadelphia, our nation’s capital at the time, into the hands of the British.

And so, Congress had to flee........

© Townhall