Answers to Study Questions

Note: There are some questions that can be answered only by the reader, because the answers depend on the reader’s thoughtful reactions to the contents of the chapter.

Chapter 1: Christ-Bearer

1. a. He wanted to find a trade route to the Indies, and he wanted to take the Gospel of Christ to the people of distant lands.
   b. He said that the Lord had put these things in his mind.
2. a. Columbus insisted on governing the lands he discovered, on being given one-tenth of all the wealth he would find, and on being named an admiral.
   b. He was allowing his desire for power and riches to take control of his heart.
3. a. During the last three days before Columbus had promised to turn back, strong winds pushed the ships across the ocean; they saw signs of land; and then sighted land just a few hours before the deadline.
   b. God wanted to teach Columbus to depend on Him.
4. a. Columbus began to lose his vision to evangelize the Indians when they told him about the gold on other islands south of San Salvador.
   b. His desire for wealth tempted him.
5. a. God prepared Columbus to make the voyage that would discover the Americas.
   b. God caused the King and Queen of Spain to agree to finance Columbus’s plan.
   c. God guided Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean to San Salvador.
   

Chapter 2: If Gold Is Your Almighty

1. Yes, because King Ferdinand told Columbus that “We are responsible to God for the welfare of our people. . . .”
2. God tried to reach him through the terrible storm just before the Niña reached the Azores and by speaking to him when he was sick on board ship with a fever.
3. Yes, because even though he allowed the search for gold to become more important to him than telling the Indians about Jesus, he never lost his faith in Jesus.

Chapter 3: Martyrs for Jesus

1. John 12:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The missionaries were like the grains of wheat in the verse, and when they were put to death because of their faith, God used their sacrifices to spread the Gospel.
2. Because they loved Jesus so much that they were willing to sacrifice their lives in service to Him, if necessary.
3. They found a beautiful continent to explore, and Native Americans who did not know about Jesus Christ. They explored many parts of North America and told the Indians about Jesus.
4. A martyr is someone who is put to death for his or her faith in Jesus Christ. Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Isaac Jogues were martyrs.
5. Both Father Jogues and Columbus loved Jesus and wanted to tell the Indians about Him, and both traveled far away from home to do so. But Columbus let his heart be seduced by the love of gold, and Father Jogues remained faithful to Jesus to the end of his life.

Chapter 4: The Lost Colony

1. They burned their houses and destroyed their corn crops, and they attacked a village of innocent Indians.
2. There were four: the 1584 Barlowe and Amadas expedition returned safely to England; Sir Richard Grenville’s 1585 expedition left fifteen men at Roanoke and their fate is unknown; in 1587 John White left 112 colonists at Roanoke when he returned to England; and when White returned to Roanoke in 1590, he found no colonists there.
3. a. The love and kindness of the Indians to the Barlowe and Amadas expedition.
   b. The Indians sharing their food with Grenville’s colonists, and Wingina teaching them to catch fish with weirs and giving them corn fields.
   c. The Indians forgave the English for White’s mistaken attack on Manteo’s relatives.
   d. The defeat of the Spanish Armada, which enabled John White to return to search for the Lost Colony.
4. a. They went to live with the Chesapeake Indians.
   b. They were all killed by Powhatan’s warriors.
   c. They ran away to the west, into the interior of the country.

Chapter 5: Jamestown

1. The Virginia Company said that their purpose was to “preach and baptize into Christian religion” the Indians in the New World. This was not true—they did not do it.
2. The arguing and fighting kept them from hearing God’s guidance and following it.
3. Robert Hunt was a godly Anglican minister who came to Jamestown in 1607. He preached God’s Word faithfully, did more than his share of the work, took care of the sick, led many of the dying to faith in Jesus, and prayed for everyone.
4. a. They did not follow God’s guidance about where to build the colony.
   b. They were lazy and did not work hard enough to plant their own food crops.
   c. They attacked the Indians—killing them, destroying their villages, and taking their crops.
5. a. God intervened two times through Pocahontas to keep Powhatan from killing John Smith.
   b. God caused the Indians to bring gifts of food to the starving colonists.
   c. God brought Lord De La Warr to Jamestown just in time to save the colony.
   d. God arranged the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, uniting the English and the Indians in a happy celebration.

Chapter 6: To the Promised Land

1. a. God’s plan for America was to form a new country where people would live by faith in Jesus Christ and obey God’s Word.
   b. The Pilgrims believed in Jesus, sought to obey God’s Word, and followed God’s guidance to come to the New World.
2. a. The Pilgrims could not fix the Speedwell’s leaks, so they finally had to sell the ship.
   b. God let this delay happen so that the fainthearted people would drop out of the expedition.
3. a. The rescue of John Howland from drowning.
   b. The shoring up of the mainmast with the screw from Brewster’s printing press.
4. a. The Pilgrims wrote the Mayflower Compact because they needed to form a government for themselves.
   b. It is important because it was the first constitution written on American soil. Also, it was the first time since the children of Israel in the Sinai wilderness (except for the Protestant Reformation) that free men and women had covenanted together to form their own government.

Chapter 7: “God Our Maker Doth Provide”

1. Squanto was kidnapped and taken to England, where he learned to speak English fluently, and then later sold as a slave in Spain. Spanish monks took him to their monastery and taught him about Jesus. He was able to interpret for the Pilgrims and he understood about their Christian faith.
2. They had learned to share the love of Jesus through their problems and trials, and by caring for one another they had become a big family. They did not want to separate.
3. a. The Jamestown settlers were lazy and unwilling to work hard planting crops, whereas the Pilgrims worked hard and made successful crops.
   b. The Jamestown settlers attacked and killed the Indians, whereas the Pilgrims respected the Indians and had peaceful relations with them.
   c. The Jamestown settlers said they believed in God but did not seek His will nor try hard to obey Him, whereas the Pilgrims sought God’s guidance and tried to put His Word into practice.
4. Five kernels of corn were placed on every Pilgrim’s plate during the 1623 Thanksgiving celebration, to remind them that God had brought them from a time of near starvation to a time of plenteous harvest.

Chapter 8: Thy Kingdom Come

1. They were unable to reform the Anglican Church from within.
2. They hoped to spread the Gospel, to practice covenant love with one another, and try to build God’s Kingdom in America.
3. John Winthrop defined covenant love as Christians loving one another and being knit together in the work God was calling them to do.
4. The Pilgrims sent their doctor, Samuel Fuller, to take care of the Puritans during their first winter at Salem, when so many were sick.
5. Yes. John Winthrop proved that he understood the meaning of commitment by a) writing about it on board the ship before they arrived, b) organizing the colonists at Salem for work, and setting them an example by working hard himself, and c) by using his own money to feed the colony.

Chapter 9: The Puritan Way

1. committed, caring, loving, serious, worshipful
2. Their own sins and the sins of others.
3. a. Roger Williams was separated from the Massachusetts Bay Colony because he did not believe that God could further the work of His Kingdom through imperfect people.
   b. Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Bay Colony because she said that God had told her that He was going to ruin the colony.
   c. Thomas Hooker was a healthy branch in God’s vineyard that He transplanted to Connecticut to develop a more democratic form of representative government.

Chapter 10: King Philip’s War

1. Because making money and buying land had become more important than staying close to God. They became independent and selfish.
2. Deuteronomy 8 teaches that if we obey the commandments of the Lord, He gives us the power to get wealth.
3. The murder of John Sassamon.
4. The “Praying Indians” became scouts for the Puritan armies and also taught the settlers how to fight like Indians, using trees for cover and setting ambushes.

Chapter 11: The First Great Awakening

1. a. The First Great Awakening began in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1734.
   b. A revival happens when so many people get saved at the same time that whole towns and cities are changed for the better.
2. In Bristol, England.
3. Whitefield preached about God’s love and salvation through Jesus Christ. He told the colonists that all men are equal and precious in the sight of God.
4. Whitefield preached his last sermon at Exeter, New Hampshire.

Chapter 12: “No King but King Jesus!”

1. Yes. When a government authority sets itself above the law, or opposes God’s will and commands the people to do so, then people are no longer obliged to obey.
2. The Navigations Acts, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts.
3. When the King closed the port of Boston, the other colonies sent gifts of food and money.
4. Samuel Adams arranged for the tea to be destroyed so the governor could not seize it and force the merchants to sell it.
5. That the colonies were not weak and that they would not fight alone, because God would raise up friends (other nations) to fight with them.

Chapter 13: War!

1. The Battle of Lexington
2. a. That not more Patriots were killed at Lexington.
   b. That the British could not find the Patriot weapons hidden at Concord.
   c. That the British broke and ran at Concord.
   d. That Sam Whittemore was not killed at Menotomy.
3. Howe had lost many troops and was afraid he would lose more if he pursued the Patriots, and the Redcoats were too exhausted to pursue.

Chapter 14: The Birth of a Nation

1. He believed the Bible was the Word of God, he had a strong prayer life, and he trusted that God would guide him.
2. It was not the will of God.
3. a. When Benedict Arnold’s little fleet stopped the British on Lake Champlain.
   b. When snowstorms enabled Henry Knox to bring Fort Ticonderoga’s cannons to Boston on sleds.
   c. When storms prevented the British from attacking Washington’s position on Dorchester Heights.
4. a. Rodney’s vote broke the tie in the Delaware delegation. If he had voted no Delaware would have voted against independence, and it would not have been declared.
   b. Declaring independence meant war with Britain, and Rodney might have died from the cancer before he was able to get to London.
5. Through the Declaration of Independence America became a nation equal to all other nations.

Chapter 15: The Dark Night of a Nation’s Soul

1. Because he fought little engagements at the edges of the British army but retreated to avoid fighting major battles that he couldn’t win.
2. a. the cold and drafty huts, the lack of food, the lack of adequate clothing, and the sickness and disease
   b. God was testing the army to see if the men were willing to stay with the army and fight for freedom, even when it was hard.
3. France
4. a. August 30, 1776: The fog that rose off the land and across the river and hid the ferrying of the American troops across the East River.
   b. December 26, 1776: The snowstorm that kept the Hessians from seeing the American attack at Trenton until it was too late.
   c. January 1777: The fact that General Washington was not killed by the British at Princeton when he was only thirty yards away from them.
   d. Winter 1778: The special gift of Baron von Steuben to the Continental Army.
   e. January 1781: The drop in the water level of the Yadkin River to let the Americans across, and the sudden rise of the water to prevent the British from crossing.

Chapter 16: Building the House

1. the Constitution of the United States
2. His words encouraged them to turn to God for help, and they soon were able to create the Constitution.
3. Each one of us can renew our covenant commitment to God and to one another. We can humble ourselves before Him, and turn away from the wrong things in our hearts and lives. By living as faithful disciples of Jesus we can care for other people and help bring America back to God.