3.1—The Principle (12 min video)

Transcript

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Alright, welcome back to another week, another lesson, another lecture. This week we’re taking up kind of where we left off in some ways. Remember we talked about the Spanish and how the Spanish were able to conquer the Mesoamerican civilizations because they had a superior worldview. Well, in order to understand that, we really need to understand their primary explorer, who wasn’t even actually Spanish, but he sailed for the Spanish kingdoms, and that is, of course, Christopher Columbus. But before we can even understand Christopher Columbus, we need to see that he comes in a long line of explorers who came centuries before him, who at many times, according to some of the stories and some of the legends, may have actually landed over here in the Americas long before he ever set sail.

Now, the lecture title for this week, it’s called “Brave New World.” And “Brave New World” is actually from a play by Shakespeare called “The Tempest.” And this is a play, like all Shakespeare plays, that has lots of things that Shakespeare tells us, and almost everything he gives has multiple meanings.

But one of the meanings behind Brave New World is it highlights this whole issue that Europe found with the New World, with the Americas, both North America and South America.

And that was the fact there was incredible opportunity. There were all of these new places to go. There were new places to live. There were new places to chart, to explore. But most importantly, there were new people to meet. There were natives over here, including those Mesoamericans, as well as other tribes, such as the Cherokee tribe, or such as the Sioux tribe, or the various tribes you encountered throughout North and South America.

And as the Europeans came over here, there were several whose attraction here, while it may have been gold, or it may have been something a little more selfish-minded, there were several Europeans, and several Spaniards and Portuguese, and French and English and Germans, who actually had in mind the whole idea of evangelizing this people group, the whole idea of bringing the gospel, which these peoples, as far as we know, had not heard prior to.

And so Brave New World really highlights the fact that there was incredible opportunities over here. And the explorers helped open that door for everyone else. Now what’s interesting about the explorers is that if you go back and you read a book, say from the early 20th century, 100 years ago, or if you go back 200 or 300 years, and you pick up a history book and you open it up, and you take a look at a story about one of the explorers, often the explorers are seen as heroes.

Most of the time, people romanticize the explorers. What that means is people saw these stories as stories of adventure. They saw these stories as stories of daring. They saw these tales as incredible feats done by people who were willing to risk their life, and often their entire fortune as well, to try and see what was actually out there and actually accomplish something great.

But in the 20th century, maybe sometime after World War II, And ever since then, typically the explorers have been vilified. Typically the explorers have just been seen as selfish men, as greedy, ambitious individuals who just wanted to conquer something new, who just want a little bit of gold and maybe some slaves to make their life a little bit easier.

Now with some of the explorers, that actually probably is true. You look at a man like Hernando de Soto and you read some of his motives, de Soto wasn’t exactly the most sterling of characters. But when you look at a man like Christopher Columbus, you really need to delve a little bit deeply, and you need to actually look to see what did he say about why he set sail.

So let’s start right there. In fact, before we get into our principle, I want to take a moment to read a couple of things to you. The first is a book here, it’s called “The People Speak,” and it’s by a modern historian, his name is Howard Zinn. And what he did was, throughout this book, he’s taken little selections from American history, And he’s just given us little snippets that are very handy so we can see what people thought, how people lived, and so forth. Well, he has one here. These are actually the words of Columbus. And what he has done is he has highlighted these words of Columbus from Columbus’s original law, from his very first voyage to the New World in 1492. I’m just going to quote Christopher Columbus. And while I’m quoting him, I want you to be thinking what you think about this man. I want you to be forming an opinion as to whether or not we can trust Columbus based upon what I read to you. Just listen. Here’s what Columbus wrote. They brought us parrots and the they would be the natives of the island he landed on. They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and the hawk’s bells that we brought. They willingly traded everything they owned. They were well-built natives with good bodies and handsome features. They do not bear any weapons, and they don’t even know weapons. For I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge, and they cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of simple cane. They would make fine servants. With fifty men, we could conquer them all and make them do whatever we want.” Now I hope, now that you’re thinking about that and you’ve listened to all of that, I imagine that you probably think Columbus wasn’t exactly a great guy. I would imagine that you would think that Columbus was looking to exploit these people. He was looking to take advantage of them and turn them into his personal slaves and subjects. But there’s just one problem with the way that this history is reported. It’s true, Columbus said all of these words, but in the middle of this quote here, which only is a few sentences, there’s a lot of what we call ellipses. Those are those three periods you sometimes see in a row, that means that text has been taken out. That means some of what he had said has actually been removed. So he did say all these words, but it’s been so edited that it no longer actually represents necessarily what he really believed. You can find all of these in his logbook. Look I have it right here. You can actually look at his logbook and you can find all those quotes. But Columbus actually tells you in his logbook what he believes and why he set sail in the first place. So instead of focusing on what a modern historian has put together, for whatever reason he has of his own, let’s actually read what Columbus said when he gave his actual motive for why he set sail in the first place. This is from the very beginning of his logbook. This would be dated the 3rd of August, 1492. And he’s writing to the king of Aragon, his his name was Ferdinand, and the Queen of Castile, whose name was Isabella. And here’s what he wrote to them at the beginning of his logbook. He said, “Your Highnesses decided to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the regions of India to see the princes there, and the peoples, and the lands, and to learn of their disposition, and of everything, and the measures which could be taken for their conversion to our holy faith.

“I informed your Highnesses how this great Khan,” that was what they called the King of the East, “and his predecessors had sent to Rome many times “to beg for men who were learned in our holy faith, “so that his people might be instructed therein, “that the Holy Father had never furnished them, “and therefore many peoples believed in idolatries “and receiving among themselves sex of perdition, “they were lost. “Your Highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes “devoted to the holy Christian faith and to the spreading of it. And as enemies of the Muslim sect and of all idolatries and heresies, you ordered that I should go to the east, but not by land as is customary.

I was to go by way of the west. Whence until today we do not know with certainty that anyone has ever gone. In other words, think back, you can rewind this video and listen to Columbus’s words again. It’s worth it because they are so valuable. But think about these words that Columbus is actually saying here. Columbus makes it very plain that the reason he set sail was for the purpose of evangelism. And in fact, in Columbus’s other writings, you’ll find it mentioned in the logbook, you’ll find it mentioned in a book that he wrote at the end of his life. One of his primary reasons for setting sail in the first place was Columbus wanted to continue the Crusades. He had no interest in hurting people, but he wanted to liberate Jerusalem, which had been conquered by the Muslims centuries before and had been put through some very tough times by the Muslims at various sections of history.

And so Columbus wanted to be able to liberate that area of the world, and he saw sailing west as a way to do it in a manner that no one else had ever done before.

So here’s really our principle, and this is what you need to write down. It’s what you need to note as we take a look this week at these various explorers that came before Columbus, and then of course, Columbus himself.

And that is first of all, the early explorers, including Columbus, they weren’t really driven by things like greed. They weren’t out there just trying to find stockpiles of gold. There were, of course, those men, but Columbus and those who came before him really don’t fit that category. Neither were these men driven by being famous. Neither were these men simply restless and they needed something to do. After all, they were risking their lives and their fortunes to do this in the first place. So our principle really is, is that what drove all of these men, there are three things I’ll give you. First of all, adventure drove them. These men wanted to see what was out there. These men were men who were curious. These men were men who understood the proverb that says, it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, and it’s the glory of kings to search a matter out. They wanted to find out what’s there, what is out beyond these seas, where no one that we know of has ever gone and returned from. Secondly, Columbus and these other explorers had incredible visions of evangelism. All of these men had the idea that if there’s a people out there who have not heard the gospel, or in this case, the Khan of China, the great Khan of Asia, who was originally Mongolian.

He goes back to Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan. The great Khan had asked for missionaries to come and tell his people about Christianity and about the scriptures, about Christ. But no one had ever come. And so Columbus saw this as an opportunity to evangelize people such as that. You have to remember, he didn’t realize he was gonna land in America. He thought he was going to land in India, and actually thought so for many years even after he landed in America. And then third, Columbus and many of these other explorers had a vision of finishing the Crusades. Not for the sake of somehow punishing old wrongs, not for the sake of any type of vengeance or any type of expansion of violence, but for the sake of making Jerusalem and the Holy Land a free and open city for all peoples of all faiths even to come to and freely worship in.

Of course, Columbus had his ideas of who the true God was and would have made that clearly known. But with all of these men, we have to look at their actual motives. And we have to understand that the motive of the early explorers was often motivated by the gospel and not really by gold and greed.

But we’ll take a look at that in the next video.