They set out with prayers and polished promises, bound for a Canaan they had only mapped in their dreams, completely blind to the terrible arithmetic of the wilderness. From the salt-sprayed decks of the Mayflower in 1620 to the snow-choked passes of the Sierra Nevada in 1846, the American pioneer's progress has always been a brutal ledger of faith paid for in flesh. We remember the grand myths of standard-bearers and empire-builders, but we forget the raw, human cost: the agonizing winters where the wind howled like a starving wolf, the agonizing choices made when the rations ran out, and the shallow graves that dug a highway across a continent. This is not a tale of seamless triumphs, but of ordinary men, women, and children who pushed past the edge of the known world, proving that the true price of discovering a new home is often everything you have left to lose.

This article was taken from the Free Grace Broadcaster. Issue 276 Summer 2026 It is abridged from John Owen's title, The Glory of Christ.

But was it never known that the just man perished by want? Are ravens always commissioned to feed the people of God in times of famine? God has them at his command, if he sees it proper to make use of them; and when he pleases, he can administer to his people's necessities as easily by miracle as by the use of ordinary means. Let them, then, joyfully commit the care of their bodies to his mercy.

In this episode, based on a lesson I taught in 2019, the aim will be to show that a revisionist history has taken place. The aim is to exhonerate Cotton Mather's reputation and then give the history of a slave named Onesimus and the development in early America for a cure for Small Pox.