Vineyard Church of Knox County
A Revolutionary Moment in Time
Sermon Audio from Sunday, July 2, 2006 — History is written one moment at a time. We are celebrating this weekend one revolutionary moment in time as we remember back to the year 1776 and the events that led to the Independence of America from Britain. I just finished reading David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book 1776 that tells the story of George Washington and the American Army in the year 1776. I wonder if you know just how amazing was the defeat of the British forces by the Americans and just how close they were to losing the war.
In April of 1776, Washington and the Americans marched from Boston to New York believing that New York was critical to winning the war against the British. Over the next few months after arriving in Brooklyn, Washington and the Americans watched as over 300 ships of the British Navy sailed into New York Harbor and Staten Island carrying over 32,000 soldiers, more than the largest American City, Philadelphia. Not only were they the largest navy ever assembled, but they were the best trained and best equipped the world had ever seen. Sound familiar? Yes, this is how we describe the U.S. armed forces today. So, picture the U.S. invading some ill-equipped, outnumbered country. Can you do that? That’s what it was like. The fighting in New York soon began in early fall of 1776 with the British taking Brooklyn in a sound defeat of Washington’s forces, and later in November Washington watched as British troops overwhelmed and destroyed fort Washington. After these two sound defeats, Washington was leading an army of approximately 3000 hungry, tired, ill-equipped, sickly men against the dominant British forces. So, what did he do? Right, he high-tailed it out of there and headed Southwest toward the continental seat of Philadelphia. In the middle of the night on November 21, 1776, Washington led a retreat over the Hudson River and into New Jersey. McCullough tells the story of how 10,000 British soldiers followed Washington’s ragtag army down through New Jersey—Newark, then Brunswick, then Princeton, and finally Trenton—until, finally, the Americans crossed the Delaware River on December 7th and set up camp on the Pennsylvania shoreline. The Americans were worried that the British would cross the Delaware and take Philadelphia, but it turns out that the British decided to wait out the winter before attacking. So, the British left 1500 troops in Trenton and the rest went back to New York to winter in comfort. As he analyzed the bleak situation after the defeats in Brooklyn, George Washington wrote that nothing less than a last-ditch, “brilliant stroke” was needed to survive. That’s when he formulated the brilliant plan to cross the Delaware in the middle of the night and lead a surprise attack on Trenton. He would take 2,400 men on Christmas night 1776 across the rough, icy Delaware River right in the middle of a full-blown northeaster storm. Each man carried 60 pounds of ammunition and 3 days’ worth of food, which added to the feat of marching 5 miles to Trenton after being drenched in icy water in the middle of the night. This relatively small group of men attacked the British in Trenton, New Jersey, beginning around 8:00 a.m. on December 26th, 1776, and changed the course of history. The attack lasted only 45 minutes but it was the defining moment in the Revolutionary War, a moment that Washington seized, a moment that has resulted in the establishment of the United States of America. Commenting on the miraculous turn-around that resulted from Washington’s crossing the Delaware River and taking Trenton, McCullough wrote: "It was Trenton and the night crossing of the Delaware that were rightly seen as a great turning point [in the Revolutionary War]. Measured by the size of its importance to those fighting for the Cause of America, those everywhere in the country who saw Washington and his army as the one means of deliverance of American independence and all that was promised by the Declaration of Independence, Trenton was the first great cause of hope, a brave and truly “brilliant” stroke. From the last week of August to the last week of December, the year 1776 had been as dark a time as those devoted to the American cause had ever known—indeed, as dark a time as any in the history of the country. And suddenly, miraculously it seemed, that had changed because of a small band of determined men and their leader. That one morning in December 1776 in Trenton, New Jersey, changed the course of history. It didn’t last long but the consequences have shaped the future of this country and the world. We never know when a moment in time will shape the future, but if we are walking with the God of the universe, every moment and any moment has the potential to have an explosive impact.
