The American Miracle with Michael Medved

In the first century of American independence, far-sighted patriots (including George Washington and John Adams) anticipated the way the development of the new nation would change the destiny of the dispersed and downtrodden Jewish people. But even these prophetic voices couldn’t foresee the other side of the bargain – the unexpected tidal wave of Jewish immigration (mostly from the troubled Russian Empire) that indelibly altered the rise of the Republic. This not only brought poetic meaning to the base of the Statue of Liberty (“I lift my lamp beside the golden door”) but also brought fame to a devout Christian thinker and activist who saw himself as “God’s Little Errand Boy” and won praise from his Jewish allies as the true “father of Zionism.”  

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The early British settlers in North American took their Bible seriously—including the verses in Genesis (12: 1-3) that promised a special blessing to those who blessed the children of Abraham. Amazingly, leading scholars and preachers emphasized this promise even before a significant number of Jews had found their way to the New World. Ironically, the original center of antisemitic sentiment was in New York (then New Amsterdam), which later developed the largest, most productive Jewish community on earth. John Adams and George Washington praised and welcomed Jewish settlers, and even befriended Mordecai Manuel Noah who developed a plan to build a “New Israel” on an island in the Niagara River in upstate New York. Later, Warder Cresson, a prominent Quaker (and briefly a convert to Mormonism), became America’s first consul to Jerusalem, where he debated Herman Melville on the Holy Land’s future and tried to deploy American aid in rebuilding a new Jewish commonwealth, based on scientific agriculture, in the then desolate site of ancient Judea.

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How did Theodore Roosevelt go from the worst day of his life—with the simultaneous death of his adored wife and beloved mother—to celebration as a national hero on his path to the presidency at the unprecedented age of 41? This astonishing progress displayed reckless, almost suicidal courage on the battlefield and a strange, almost supernatural sense of his own invincibility. Eyewitnesses and close friends who watched his mounted charge up San Juan Hill, leading his colorful, unconventional regiment into seemingly lethal enemy lines to win the decisive battle of the Spanish-American War, saw his success as an open miracle. Concerning his previous day of grief, TR said: "Black Care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough." Young Roosevelt illustrated that maxim in his dramatic rise to power.

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May 8th, 1886: American pharmacist John S. Pemberton sells the first glass of Coca-Cola at a pharmacy in downtown Atlanta, a drink he originally bills as a cure-all tonic.

History Daily podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-daily/id1591095413

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Donald Trump wasn't the only president to attempt a return trip to the White House four years after he'd left the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt attempted his own comeback in 1912 and, like Trump, he was hit by a would-be assassin's bullet in the midst of his campaign. For TR, the shooting was nearly fatal - with only his glasses case and the folded pages his planned speech stop stopping the bullet from reaching his heart. Bleeding profusely, he insisted on delivering his address in any event -- one of the more bizarre political rallies in our history. The remarkable story, revealing TR's haunting, lifelong connection to death, is told in THE REAPER AND THE BULLMOOSE, the latest episode in our American Miracle podcast series.

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Napoleon Bonaparte was noted for conquering new territory for France, not giving away a huge portion of North America at the cost of mere pennies an Acre. A strange, haunting series of events made the Louisiana Purchase possible, and with it the acquisition of land that later became 15 new states. Those events included the brutal attempts to suppress the only successful slave rebellion in all human history, the unseasonal and unprecedented freezing over of an important Dutch Harbor, plus the skill and flexibility of American leaders who managed to overcome the partisan divisions that had begun to paralyze the young Republic.

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Six months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy rules the Pacific, before a combination of good fortune and brilliant intelligence work come together in a fateful, five minute interlude that alters the tide of war and ends the grandiose dreams of Japanese empire.

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A Congregation of fervent religious dissidents risk everything to create an idealistic outpost at the edge of wilderness. Missing their initial destination by some 250 miles, they manage to connect with the one inhabitant in all of North America best-suited to help them escape starvation and death.

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The fiftieth anniversary "Jubilee" celebration of American Independence (July 4th, 1826) brings a startling development that convinces a new nation of its providential protection. On that festive day, the two patriotic heroes most responsible for declaring independence—Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—both lived to share in the festivities, but passed into eternity before the end of that same Glorious Fourth. Daniel Webster, the greatest orator of the era, and contemporary historians calculate the odds against such an undirected coincidence as utterly overwhelming.

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One of the questions that people are asking about the attempted assassination of President Trump last Saturday is whether it shows that there is special divine protection for Donald Trump. To answer the question about what this all means, there’s no better place to turn than the Bible. In the book of Exodus, chapter 33, there is a haunting passage that gives us a hint of an answer.

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