Battle Of Lexington — Yes, FREEDOM *is* the responsibility of the church.

 This is a portrait of Rev. Jonas Clarke, who was pastoring the Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, in April of 1775. (Sometimes his surname is spelled "Clark" without the final e, and I haven't found a cause for the different spellings.) 

On the evening of April 18th, John Hancock¹ and Samuel Adams² were staying with him when Handcock received two separate messages saying that eight or nine of King George's troops had been seen earlier that evening on the road to Lexington. The king's troops were described as having "a musing contemplative posture" and were suspected of being "out on some evil design."³ The evil design being arrest, or possibly assassination, because Handcock had been threatened multiple times by the British. 

Indeed, the first shots of the War for Independence would take place the next morning, only a few miles away. And more messages would be delivered by Paul Revere and the other riders a few hours later regarding threats to stockpiled ammunition in Concord.  While most American History courses cover the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and most American Literature classes read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem titled 'Paul Revere's Ride,' those are only the historical setting for this particular blog.  My main subject is the responsibility of the Church, the ecclesia, the assembly of believers in Jesus. 

But first, let's take a quick side trip to Leviticus 25:10. 

  And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. -KJV

The emboldened portion of this verse is engraved on the Liberty Bell. It is my studied and researched opinion that this phrase is the most succinct expression of the Lord's plan and design for the United States. When John Winthrop (1606-1676), a Puritan governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, envisioned America as a fulfillment of Matthew 5:14, a shining city set on a hill whose light cannot be hidden, he was seeing prophetically across the years to America's God-ordained destiny.  Today, that destiny has come under full satanic assault. But God has not changed His mind. It is still the responsibility of believers to assemble together to proclaim liberty throughout all the land for all its inhabitants. 

And back to Jonas Clarke...

When Rev. Clarke saw the threat to his house guests, he got ten or twelve men from his congregation to guard his house for the night. Apparently the king's officers did not know that Handcock and Adams were staying at the parson's home because in Clarke's journal of the event, he says that this small group passed on by Lexington on the way to Concord. It was now about 10 PM, and three men on horseback were sent to follow the British and see what they were up to. 

The rest of the night would prove fairly chaotic. Clarke recorded that in the hour following midnight they got word that the scouts had been detained and threatened by the British, and Revere's riders had brought word that an estimated 1200 British troops were on the way to the arsenal in Concord. 

With this news, the Lexington militia was alerted. But when riders from Cambridge reported a couple hours later that the British troop movement had been a feint, Clarke wrote that militia was "dismissed for the present, but with orders to be within the call of the drum."³  Envoys were sent out to check, but despite the effort to get the best intelligence possible, Clarke continues, "after all this precaution, we had no notice of their approach 'till the brigade was actually in the town, and upon a quick march and within about a mile and a quarter of the meeting house and place of parade (where the militia was to assemble)."³ 

The militia (50-60 men) was called back at roughly 4:30 AM, and the British (then estimated as 1200, but later, after daylight, revised downward to 800-1000) had made it to the east end of the meeting house. Clarke records the separation as 12-13 rods (~200 feet).³  My college textbooks, in an effort to condense the Revolutionary period into a chapter or two, skipped over Lexington and told of the Battle at Concord, 18 miles from Boston, where ammunition had been stored and the Minutemen defended the bridge. But the first armed confrontation, and the first eight deaths of Americans, was at Lexington, in the predawn of April 19, 1775.  

The meeting house is to the right of the tree. The lighting in this picture, however, is misleading; the battle at Lexington began before daybreak, and in mid-April the trees would not yet be in full leaf. (The building to the left of the tree is the public house/tavern, and the steeple-looking building is the well. Animals grazed on the common green in the foreground). 

 

The Minutemen of Lexington were not totally unprepared for conflict. Rev. Clarke and one of his deacons, John Parker, who had experience as a Captain from the French and Indian War, had been training and organizing the men of Lexington on Sunday afternoons after church. It was Parker who led the Lexington militia, but Clarke's courage and leadership held a critical role. The preacher was not conflicted about submitting to the authority of the crown. When asked if the men in his congregation would fight, he replied, "I have trained them for this very hour. They would fight, and, if need be, die, too, under the shadow of the house of God."

Indeed, the first men to die were his own parishioners, and in the aftermath of the Battle of Lexington he made the observation, "From this day will be dated the Liberty of the World."⁴  Like John Winthrop a century earlier, he had caught a vision of the destiny that God has for America.

King George feared the power of America's Colonial preachers. "King George III blamed the war on the preachers by calling it a 'Presbyterian rebellion.' Horace Walpole, the English Prime Minister, said, 'There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has eloped with a Presbyterian parson.'"⁵ Certainly there were far more Christians besides the Presbyterians who fought for domestic liberty, and the king's generals were *more inclusive* when they disparagingly referred to all of America's clergy as the "black-robed regiment."  But the point is that The Church, the assembly of believers, was being Salt & Light to the world; and it had its effect in producing a land of liberty. 

God has not changed His mind.  The responsibility of securing freedom still rests on His people. The Democrats & RiNOs surely aren't going to deliver. 

Footnotes

¹ Most famous for his oversized signature on the Declaration of Independence, John Handcock was an American merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

² Actually, yes, Samuel Adams did have a tangential connection to beer. The Adams' family business was making malted barley and selling it to brewers. But it is an honorary connection only, because the Boston Beer Company did not introduce that brand name until two centuries later in 1984. The Samuel Adams of the American Revolution was instrumental in organizing the boycott of British goods as a way to protest "taxation without representation." Progressive historians like to brand him as a "rabble rouser" but a more honest description is that he was a Puritan who believed in civil disobedience to tyranny. Adams was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. 

³ Jonas Clarke's Narrative of the Battle of Lexington.

⁴ http://www.famousamericans.net/jonasclark/

⁵ http://reclaimamericaforchrist.org/2010/12/20/the-black-robed-regiment-preachers-who-fought/

A Deacon Parker Quote? 

The statement "Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here," is often attributed to one of Rev. Clarke's deacons, Capt. John Parker.  No one had an iPhone to record it, but there are many sources that support the first part, and Parker's official report said that he ordered the militia to disperse and not to fire. Shots were fired, however, and who fired first is in dispute with both sides claiming the other side did.   The two sources for the second half of the quote are Sergeant Munroe who served under Parker, and Parker's grandson,Theodore. This part made it onto the monument that commemorates the battle, and if not wholly true, is at least legendary.