These are the times …

 

Part 1

“People will be so frightened that they will faint because of what is happening to the world.

It will seem like all hell has broken loose—sun, moon, stars, earth, sea, in an uproar and everyone all over the world in a panic, the wind knocked out of them by the threat of doom, the powers-that-be quaking.”

These weighty words are a contemporary paraphrasing of the historian apostle Luke’s forewarning in the 21st chapter of the book of Luke contained in Scripture.

Words that would be echoed some seventeen hundred years later by another wordsmith. A man born into humble circumstances in England, his father employed in the feminine-waist constriction trade: a corset maker. Barely educated in his youth, he flunked out of one of England’s oldest grammar schools at the age of twelve. He chose to devote his newly found spare time to conceptual learning as he loved ideas and absorbed insights from wide-ranging sources. Historians would note how his self-directed learning patterns immersed him into the ideas and issues of his day without his intelligence being filtered or routed by the constricts of formal education.

In other words, he was a man who knew intellectual freedom of thought and valued and recognized the God given right to express it.

This reality birthed his single most distinguishing attribute, his naturally acquired ability to speak truth …simple, direct and impassioned. Truth that would propel a fledgling nation to freedom.

So who is this fuzzy historical figure of the 1700s?

Thomas Paine, English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary.

During the winter of 1776, the colonies and the entire rebel American cause were on the verge of annihilation with the revolution viewed as teetering. Paine, who was serving as an administrative assistant to Fort Lee’s commanding officer and at the same time was an embedded war correspondent sending dispatches from the front lines of the American Revolution, wanted to embolden the distraught patriots to stand firm, to persevere, and to fight for an American victory.

Writes Tom Meyers, founder and Executive Director of the Fort Lee Film Commission, “When Fort Washington fell in November of 1776, Paine stood atop Fort Lee’s Palisades next to General George Washington as they witnessed the capture of thousands of American soldiers across the river. This was the low point of the American Revolution and this is when Paine began to pen his greatest work, The American Crisis. He continued to write The Crisis as he evacuated Fort Lee with Washington and the troops on November 20th and as they escaped capture via their Retreat to Victory across the Jerseys. Paine was granted leave to have his work published in Philadelphia and he returned to his position with Washington’s Army by Christmas Eve 1776.

“General Washington had his officers read Paine’s work to his troops prior to their Christmas Eve crossing of the Delaware.

“Washington’s commitment to cross the Delaware River on Christmas 1776 foreshadowed the many hardships faced as well as the eventual victory of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. At first glance, the decision to transport 2,400 Continental soldiers across an icy river in one night, directly into a severe winter storm of sleet and snow seems irrational.”

Writes Paine, “As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances, which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of.”

Discerning words, I would suggest, voiced by a man who “lived” his reality …who did not vicariously reinterpret reality.

Excerpts from The American Crisis, by Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. [Wow! What a statement!] Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated…. for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.

“’Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them.”

“I have been tender in raising the cry against these men [those who foster oppression in society stemming from ‘kinglike’ control of an unequal and undemocratic political system], and used numberless arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a world either to their folly or their baseness [depravity]. The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall.”

Paine’s main purpose for writing The American Crisis was to provide substance to things hoped for; to wrap people in the comfort of time, which was something that panic and confusion had robbed them of.

NEXT WEEK PART 2: “These are the times …”