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Eric Metaxas: The Real Squanto

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CBN.com Squanto: God's Provision to the Pilgrims

Eric's children's book is based on solid historical research. We know that before the Pilgrims fled from England to Holland and then to the New World for religious freedom, there were other European traders who visited the coast of Nova Scotia, Maine, and Massachusetts. We know that in 1608, an English ship stopped and traded with the Patuxet tribe off the coast of what today is Plymouth, Mass.

Captain Hunt's sailors kidnapped several of the young braves, including 12-year-old Squanto, and threw them into the hold of their ship. Eventually they were brought ashore in Malaga, Spain, where they were sold as slaves. Squanto was bought by monks who treated him well. They taught him their language and about their faith. We assume they helped him get to England five years after he arrived, as we know Squanto did not escape from the Spanish monks.

In England, Squanto lived at the home of merchant John Slanie where he worked in the stables and learned English. After another long five years, in approximately 1619, a merchant ship was located that was going back to the New World. Eventually, the ship sailed down the Maine coast and took Squanto to where his Patuxet village had been. But everyone in the village had died -- probably from smallpox. For a time Squanto lived with a neighboring tribe, but he finally went to live in the woods by himself. Then a tribesman from a neighboring village, Samoset, came to Squanto in the woods and told him that the year before a shipload of whitemen and their families had arrived by ship and settled in the very place Squanto had lived as a boy.

From the perspective of the Pilgrims who arrived at what they called Plymouth in 1620, we need to remember that their first year had been a devastating nightmare. Half of their members had died from sickness and starvation, they were thousands of miles away from home, and they were surely questioning God. Suddenly, out of the woods walks an Indian speaking the King's English. Because Squanto had grown up there, he could teach them the best places to find lobsters, how to plant corn by burying kernels along with a fish for fertilizer, and how to find and catch eels in the muddy streams. Truly, Squanto was a godsend to the Pilgrims.

Governor Bradford compared Squanto to Joseph in the Bible. Joseph had been taken from his home and sold as a slave, but God had a plan. Through Joseph, God was able to save many people from starvation. What man had intended for evil God intended for good.

In the autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims decided to set aside a time to thank God for His merciful blessings. They invited Squanto and other braves from Samoset's tribe who showed up carrying deer, wild turkeys, and many vegetables. Truly God had miraculously woven together the wandering lives of a lonely Patuxet brave and struggling band of English Pilgrims in such a way that would bless the whole world for centuries to come. (Squanto died several years later.)

Dreams About His Salvation

Eric was raised in church but never heard about salvation. Expecting to conquer the literary world after graduation from Yale, he found himself at age 24 living with his parents and working a "horrible" job as a proofreader at Union Carbide. There he worked with a born-again Episcopalian, Ed Tuttle, who consistently witnessed to Eric. When Eric's uncle was hospitalized in a coma, Ed told Eric that people at his church were praying for his uncle. And then he asked Eric if he could pray with him about his uncle. Eric was deeply touched that people he did not know were praying for his uncle and that they really believed that their prayers would be heard and answered. Several weeks later around his 25th birthday, Eric dreamed that he had found what he was looking for -- God -- in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Telling Ed about his dream, Ed asked Eric what he thought the dream meant. Without hesitation, Eric said it meant he had accepted Jesus. Eric has never looked back.

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