The First Principles of the Oracles of God
During the Friday Live Stream Broadcast, Doyle ministered by the Spirit of God, The United States was not founded as a Judeo-Christian nation as we hear spoken by commentators throughout the country. Studying the recorded writings of the early settlers of New England, they didn't write about the Law of Moses, they followed the teachings of Jesus Christ. In the early 1600's God sent a people to America, to found a nation on the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In 1620, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth bringing a small group of people who sought to worship God as their conscience dictated. Edward Winslow wrote of the Pilgrims' pastor, John Robinson's farewell words to the initial congregants who left for America:
"But whether the Lord had appointed it or not; he charged us, before God and his blessed angels, to follow him no further than he followed Christ: and if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of his, to be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by his Ministry. For he was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word".
Samuel Gorton along with others came to New England in the 1630's. "I left my native country to enjoy the liberty of conscience in respect to faith towards God, and no other end." There in the Massachusetts Colony he found that the Puritans who had arrived in 1630 had established a church government as strict and severe as the one they had left. He and his family moved to Plymouth where there seemed to be more liberty, however, he became entangled in a dispute over his housekeeper being charged with smiling in church and he was exiled from the colony. In both colonies, the religious leaders disliked Gorton's doctrine.
There were others who had received the same treatment and were ostracized because of their beliefs. They began to gather in what is now known as Rhode Island and these people practiced the first principles of the oracles of God found in Hebrews 6:
1) "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
2) Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
Roger Williams founded Providence Plantation and later, Samuel Gorton, Stukely Westcott, Ezekiel Holliman, John Greene, John Warner, Chad Brown, John Crandall, William Wickenden joined him, and these families met in their homes to conduct meetings and worship. The first recorded records of formal meetings were in 1639 when this group of men met and were baptized by immersion. They established what has later been recorded as a Six Principles Church, which many years later became known as the first Baptist Church established in America. Obadiah Holmes was another notable name, along with John Clarke, who also settled in Rhode Island, in the Newport area and they also established a Six Principle church in that area. Samuel Gorton later founded Shawomet which became Warwick, teaching these principles to all who came, ministering to the native Indians of the area as well.
Samuel Gorton had also been involved in the establishment of the government at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. One historian is quoted as saying that the government that had originally been formed on Aquidneck Island by Gorton and associates at Portsmouth, "operated like leaven in diffusing itself through the minds of the masses and formed the nucleus out of which sprang the Declaration of Independence." At the close of the government code appears these words:
"These are the laws that concern all men, and these are the penalties for the transgression thereof, which by common consent are ratified and adopted throughout the whole colon, and otherwise than thus what is here in forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, everyone in the name of God, and let the saints of the Most High walk in the colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, forever and amen."
Doyle is a descendant of Samuel Gorton, Stukely Westcott, Ezekiel Holliman, and John Warner and he has been ministering the foundation teachings from Hebrews 6 since his ministry began.
David Kapareit is a descendant of eighteen passengers of the Mayflower Pilgrims and is also a descendant of Samuel Gorton, Stukely Westcott, Ezekiel Holliman, John Warner, Chad Brown, John Crandall, William Wickenden and Obadiah Holmes. David has a written of Obadiah Holmes on his web page which tells of an account in 1651 when Holmes, John Clark and John Crandall held a meeting in Lynn, Massachusetts at a friend's house who was aged and not able to travel. The authorities of Massachusetts learned of the meeting and arrived to arrest them under the charge of holding an illegal meeting.
The group of people God gathered in Rhode Island, refused to submit to the severe laws of the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, knowing they had come to America to follow the teachings of Jesus as they understood them. Samuel Gorton devoted his entire life in the new country to resisting those who purposed through civil authority to impose their religious beliefs on all who came. Gorton and others knew the only way to preserve freedom of worship was to have a separation of church and state, which to them meant that government, had no right to dictate a person's beliefs. The authorities brought Gorton before the courts time after time, seeking to rid themselves of him, even to have him killed. God surely upheld him, each time making a way for him to escape. Wicked men not only desired to destroy Samuel Gorton and his associates, but overtake all the settlements of that area. If they had succeeded, a very different government would have been established.
Samuel Gorton wrote extensively and Doyle has read the published commentary, "An Incorruptible Key, Composed of the CX Psalm." He notes Gorton's statement,
"...If there be a righteousness before that whereby he is made righteous, it is not the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ, he is yet in his sin. If there be a spirit before that by which he is illuminated, it is not the Spirit of God, received by the hearing of faith, but a spirit of delusion, arising from the works of the law."
Obadiah Holmes spoke to the crowd as he was about to be publicly whipped for holding the illegal meeting in Lynn, Massachusetts:
"The Lord, having manifested his love towards me, in giving me repentance towards God and faith in Christ, and so to be baptized in water by a messenger of Jesus, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, wherein I have fellowship with him in his death, burial, and resurrection, I am now come to be baptized in afflictions by your hands, that so I may have further fellowship with my Lord, and am not ashamed of his sufferings, for by his stripes am I healed."
There are numerous writings posted on the Nation Bringing Forth Fruit page about the earliest founders of this nation and also other resources listed, for all who would be inclined to do further research.
Sources: The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton, by Adelos Gorton (1908), Trials and Sufferings for Religious Liberty in New England by J.R. Graves (1858)
Contributed by Kathryn Currier
posted May 8, 2010
