We were able to spend a week in New England, and throughly enjoyed our time there. There is no artwork or architecture of man that can compare with the handiwork of God as He paints the hills and vales of that part of the country in the autumn of the year. The crimson, orange, and yellow hues spread across a landscape broken only by the many rock-strewn streams and the bountiful lakes of the region. One cannot look upon the scenes without offering praise to their Creator.
It is a part of our nation steeped in the history of our origins as we walked along ways perhaps once traversed by the Green Mountain Boys, the Minutemen, or General Washington’s Continental Army.
In Rhode Island we visited the birthplace of real religious liberty, as this little state became the first government in the world to recognize that freedom cannot exist without the freedom of each man to worship according to his own individual conscience. This cornerstone of liberty is the unique contribution of our Baptist forbearers. One can still visit the first and second Baptist churches in America, in Providence and Newport, where John Clarke, co-founder of Rhode Island, was the first pastor.
Though steeples punctuate the skylines of the New England cities, they now serve more as monuments and landmarks than gospel preaching stations. We came across one of the oldest church buildings in Boston, and found it now serving as a promotional place for LGBT causes. Others had been converted into museums, coffee houses and such and some had the mere vestiges of religious ceremony carried on in them. The great need an awakening of Biblical faith was as evident there as it is here in the West.
Psalm 85:6 Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?