George Washington's Prophesy of America

Amaerican Patriots Network ^ | September 2010

[Kartographer]

Let me make myself more clear then:

I would be most honored to have an Angel address me as 'Son of the Republic'. I see no diference and no more disrespect then addressing someone as 'Son of Adam'or 'Son of Abraham'.

[Kartographer]

Sorry I cut and pasted it as found.

[PastorBooks]

I think it comes down to whether or not someone believes that prophecy can be for today. I did some research on this vision a few years back, and there isn’t much to go on except that it was first published around the time of the Civil War.

My opinion is that it could be genuine. Without knowing more about the man who originally gave the account, we cannot know.

I do believe that “God governs in the affairs of men,” and that America is special and chosen by the Lord to accomplish a purpose in the Earth. It is possible that He sent us a message, for a future or soon-to-come time when we would need the encouragement.

In short, there’s no way to know if it’s real, but it doesn’t hurt to pray over it.

[Pelham]

Snopes says this tale is a concoction made up by one Charles W Alexander during the Civil War.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/vision.asp

[Psalm 144]

My take is that the third crisis will be brought on by the current occupant of the executive mansion. What do you see?

*************

This, to be blunt:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book.”
Revelation 22:18-19

God has a covenant nation. That nation is not the United States. He has blessed us in the past because in the main we have served Him . . . in the past.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Snopes? Hahahahaha! You do know what Snopes is, don’t you?

[PastorBooks]

“You do know what Snopes is, don’t you?”

I thought it’s some kind of rumor-debunking site. What is it?

[conservativeimage]

When someone says they have a message from God, they need to have a history of integrity. The 82 year gap between the alleged conception of this vision and it’s singular delivery by some nameless guy who claimed that he was the only one who knew about it is a serious problem. The right title for this post should be “an old soldier’s prophesy of America.” It’s hard to see that it really has anything to do with President Washington other than the appearance that the soldier needed a big name in order to get any one’s attention. Although entertaining and thought provoking, it doesn’t make the present or future any more clearer.

[StonyBurk]

I noticed it too —and for this reason have filed it under
folk myth. It is a nice story -but elements of surreal keep
it from being embraced as truth.

[StonyBurk]

AMEN—and AMEN-If I might be so bold to call you brother.

[PGR88]

My take is that the third crisis will be brought on by the current occupant of the executive mansion. What do you see?

Obviously it talks about great conflicts, and I agree that at least one must be the Civil War, but what do the others mean? I have no idea!

[Lee N. Field]

However, little publicity has been given to the vision and prophecy he received at that time.

So Washington's a prophet too, now? Great, just great.

Civil religion.

[Ripliancum]

I love this painting of Washington at Valley Forge. Thanks for posting it.

You do know that is was painted by a Mormon right? I ask because you participate on the Anti Mormon threads. Just thought you should know.

As to the Washington prophecy, I believe there is much truth there. We have a third tribulation coming, and it’s not going to be pretty.

[Ripliancum]

Why is it improbable that Washington couldn’t have a vision?

Joel prophesied of such things in the latter days, right before the end.

Joel 2:
28 ¶ And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
29 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come.

[ShadowAce]

Third crisis kinda sounds like WWII. We we pushed back for a while, but then prevailed--not only over Europe, but Asia as well.

Not saying this is correct--just that it sounds like it.

[Ripliancum]

Except that our country, cities, villages were not invaded. The rest of the world was in chaos, but outside of Hawaii, we were pretty much untouched.

If it is to be believed, I think it is yet to happen.

[ShadowAce]

Good point. I can concede to that.

[2ndDivisionVet]

It’s run by a pair of aging hippies (husband & wife) from their trailer in California. Many seem to think it’s some huge organization of thousands that fact-checks everything and helps the CIA in their spare time...

[monkapotamus]

Another article:

The Truth of Washington's Vision

Earlier this week I zipped by Valley Forge National Historical Park, so it seems like a good moment to discuss a most curious text about Gen. George Washington at that camp that appears on a lot of websites.

The text called "Washington's Vision" describes an angelic figure coming to the general in his tent at Valley Forge and giving him a prophecy about the future of the U.S. of A. Here's a sample:

Presently I heard a voice saying, "Son of the Republic, look and learn," while at the same time my visitor extended her arm eastwardly, I now beheld a heavy white vapor at some distance rising fold upon fold. This gradually dissipated, and I looked upon a stranger scene. Before me lay spread out in one vast plain all the countries of the world—Europe, Asia, Africa and America. I saw rolling and tossing between Europe and America the billows of the Atlantic, and between Asia and America lay the Pacific.

"Son of the Republic," said the same mysterious voice as before, "look and learn." At that moment I beheld a dark, shadowy being, like an angel, standing or rather floating in mid-air, between Europe and America. Dipping water out of the ocean in the hollow of each hand, he sprinkled some upon America with his right hand, while with his left hand he cast some on Europe. Immediately a cloud raised from these countries, and joined in mid-ocean. For a while it remained stationary, and then moved slowly westward, until it enveloped America in its murky folds. Sharp flashes of lightning gleamed through it at intervals, and I heard the smothered groans and cries of the American people.

A second time the angel dipped water from the ocean, and sprinkled it out as before. The dark cloud was then drawn back to the ocean, in whose heaving billows in sank from view. A third time I heard the mysterious voice saying, "Son of the Republic, look and learn," I cast my eyes upon America and beheld villages and towns and cities springing up one after another until the whole land from the Atlantic to the Pacific was dotted with them. . . .

I quoted some of this text as throwaway material on my other blog. Since then, I've dug deeper and learned more about its origin.

The earliest publication of "Washington's Vision" that I've found was in the 24 June 1861 Philadelphia Inquirer. That December, it was published in the Pittsfield Gazette, and the following April in the New Hampshire Sentinel. In 1864, "Washington's Vision" was published as a pamphlet, now available for online viewing courtesy of Indiana University. It's possible that the original publication was an even earlier 1861 pamphlet that the Inquirer quoted from.

The author of the article/pamphlet, Wesley Bradshaw, describes hearing of Washington's experience through a veteran of Valley Forge named Anthony Sherman. In Prominent American Ghosts, Susy Smith claimed, "Sherman told the story to several people," and, "A Mormon periodical carried the account in 1856," though she doesn't identify that periodical. However, the 1861 text has Sherman saying something quite different: that on 4 July 1859 he told Bradshaw a tale "which no one alive knows of except myself." (I suppose Smith, also author of Confessions of a Psychic and E.S.P. for the Millions, may have had special sources for her information. But I doubt it.)

The 1864 edition of "Washington's Vision" comes with a cover blurb from Edward Everett, the important and sadly forgotten Massachusetts politician and orator. (I wonder if he ever actually saw the pamphlet.) The same publication contains poetry and a story about 99-year-old Jane Seymour knitting stockings for Washington's army, then much later for the Union army during the Civil War. It's patriotic propaganda through and through, as shown by the cover line "The First Union Story Ever Written."

Are there any reliable facts in "Washington's Vision"? A man named Anthony Sherman did serve in the Continental Army. He applied for and received a pension in the 1830s. However, his pension application said he wasn't at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78; he was with Gen. Benedict Arnold's army instead. Furthermore, Anthony Sherman is not listed among Revolutionary veterans receiving a pension in 1840, meaning he had died by that year—well over a decade before he supposedly spoke to Wesley Bradshaw in Philadelphia.

Wesley Bradshaw didn't exist, either. That was a pseudonym used by Charles W. (for Wesley) Alexander, the publisher of "Washington's Vision". John Adcock at Yesterday's Papers says that Alexander, using his "Wesley Bradshaw" identity, had already contributed to a series of illustrated pamphlets that

purported to be true stories of murderers and female fiends, full of torture, murder and melerdrama, usually beginning on page 19, so a 64 page work was not all it was advertised to be.

(Note that Washington's Vision gets rolling on page 11.) Thus, if we believe the story Alexander tells in "Washington's Vision," he heard of an angelic prophecy crucial to the nation, and chose to publish it under the same pseudonym he used for exploitative potboilers.

In fact, a big part of Alexander's work was responding to recent public events with patriotic thrillers and legends. During and after the Civil War he wrote and published several novels such as Pauline of the Potomac; Or, General McClellan's Spy; its sequel Maud of the Mississippi, General Grant's Daring Spy; and the immortal The Angel of the Battlefield: A Tale of the Rebellion. In 1876, just in time for the Centennial celebration, Alexander came out with The History and Legends of the Old Liberty Bell in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. "Washington's Vision" is part of that fictional output, not a historic link to Valley Forge.

Nonetheless, "Washington's Vision" has been reprinted many times since 1861, including in the Grand Army of the Republic's newspaper, the National Tribune, in 1880, and its successor Stars and Stripes in 1950. And now it's on the internet, so it will never die.

[Thanks to M. T. Anderson and Nicole for the Susy Smith reference, and for getting me interested in this remarkable publication.]

http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2006/12/truth-of-washingtons-vision.html

[Psalm 144]

If you believe and accept John 3:16 then indeed you may:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Narratives like those in this thread distress me, for several reasons. Principally, because if one is going to advance something as prophecy, that thing had better be direct and unaltered and complete from the mouth of God.

God’s message to us is about Him as the one who is holy, us as the ones who decidedly are not, and how individuals are granted a way back to Him and to sanctification. This narrative does not even mention God. Nor Christ. Nor holiness. Nor the redemption of souls and the pursuit of righteousness. Instead of God, the focus is on the State, and the spread and perpetuation of a worldly imperium. Satan offered that to Jesus once. Jesus wasn’t interested.

God is immortal. Souls are immortal. Nations are fleeting.

Nations, as the bible tells us, are mere dust from the vantage point of God. They are instruments to work out His designs, and eventually they are all done away with once their purposes have been accomplished, or their virtues and God’s patience are exhausted. The King of Kings does not govern a republic, and has no need of votes or voters.

False prophecy is no light matter. In distinction from fables, allegories or express fantasy, false prophecy misleads, confuses and disarms people from the real warfare - spiritual or temporal - with which all must grapple, either well or badly. False prophecy can cost people their lives, and not merely their physical lives. This narrative is a leaden counterfeit. The style is overheated, 19th century Bulwer-Lytton melodrama. The subject is one of scant attention in scripture - the governance and longevity of temporal nations in a fallen and damned world. The entire subject, from a Biblical perspective, is . . . irrelevant.

We are tempted to clutch at things like this because of the present appearance of ascendant evil. That is understandable, but unwise. Which leads me to the second reason such gnostic mysticism is wrong.

The United States has indeed had, for the most part, an exceptional history, exceptional prosperity and has enjoyed exceptional blessings. We have enjoyed those things because our ancestors were for the most part faithful to God - not to the State. Where just, our ancestors accepted the laws of man, but FEARED the laws of God.

That culture is fading. So are our virtues, blessings and prospects.

The Founders were not demi-gods or supermen. The Founders had nothing available to them that we do not. The Founders were not special men. What the Founders were, was faithful. They called upon God for His assistance, and they received that assistance.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” That is what made the Founders different. They had their priorities right.

McCain’s effort two years ago was doomed even as it started. “Country First” is not a policy. “Country First” is a blasphemy, attributing primacy to a manmade idol, the State. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”.

Draw from the spring of living water. Accept no substitutes.