Around this time, King James had received a petition from an expeditionary group which called itself the Virginia Company, so named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.
James called upon one of his chief advisors, the Reverent Hakluyt to help in the writing of the group's charter. The Reverent Hakluyt was able to convince the king and his colleagues in the Virginia Company to make Christianity and world evangelism a key objective of this new colony.
King James chartered the group, stating that the primary mission of the company was evangelistic. He said:
We greatly commend and graciously accept their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, . . .[1]
On December 20, 1606, the company set sail for America with their admonition first and foremost, to create a Christian colony on those distant shores. Reverent Hakluyt was too old to travel so he sent another Anglican (Church of England) priest in his stead, the Reverent Robert Hunt. I quote from an account of this landing:
The settlers landed on the shores of Virginia on April 26, 1607. Before permitting the colonists to continue inland, Rev. Hunt required that every person wait before God in a time of personal examination and cleansing.
Three days later, on April 29, 1607, the expedition, led by Parson Hunt, went ashore to dedicate the continent to the glory of God. . . . As the party landed on the wind-swept shore they erected [a] seven-foot oak cross in the sand.[2]
All of the settlers then knelt in the sand as Reverent Hunt offered a formal dedicatory prayer for the new colony. He raised his hands in supplication to heaven and consecrated the entire continent to the “glory of God” proclaiming that from this content the Gospel of Jesus Christ would go forth into the entire world.
A few years ago a writer was visiting Colonial Williamsburg for a look at how those early Virginia settlements would have looked. One of the first places he visited was the church. He went to the pulpit to look at the 100 year old Bible that was there, a gift from the King of England to President Theodore Roosevelt. The Bible was not there. He finally asked the guide where it was and she said it had been moved into a little side room. He was appalled that the symbol of the entire Virginia expedition, a King James Bible, should be removed from its place of honor and relegated to a tiny room away from the Nave. He asked, literally and figuratively, “Where has the Bible gone?” I would invite interested parties to read his entire work at https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/400-years-after-jamestown-where-did-the-bible-go
Where has the Bible gone? Our former President declared during his first week in office that “America is no longer a Christian nation.” He couldn’t have been more wrong! Speak out about the role of Jesus Christ and His gospel in the founding of this nation. The Bible has been gone from the public view for far too long.
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