America is No Accident

Have you ever stopped and thought how different America might be if certain events had turned out differently?

What if the colonists had lost the American Revolution? What if the Confederacy had prevailed against the Union Army? What if President Kennedy had survived the assassin’s bullet – or President Reagan had not?

At the core of these “what if?” questions is an ageless and fundamental curiosity. Do our choices in life really matter – or is God behind the curtain pulling all the strings?

Or put more bluntly: Is it God or is it man who is in the middle of all things?

Or could it be that yes, God is in charge, but as His servants, our actions do matter and have consequences?

In many ways, the answers to these speculative and theological questions are what’s behind a new movie being released next week, The American Miracle: Our Nation is No Accident.

This patriotic study boasts an impressive cast: Pat Boone, Kevin Sorbo, Nicole C. Mullen, Cameron Arnett, and James Arnold Taylor. Incidentally, Boone and Sorbo both play Thomas Jefferson at his various ages of life. It’s a screenplay adapted from a book of the same name by Michael Medved, the syndicated radio host and author.

“I wrote The American Miracle because I had become convinced, studying American history, that the country was different and special,” Medved recently shared.

“And because one of the messages that I got from my late father, beginning when I was a very little boy, was that it was impossible to understand our country and how our country had emerged out of really nothing to be this dominant feature in the world – to imagine that without what all of the Founders believed in, which was the idea of divine Providence.”

Secularists or outright atheists attribute America’s fortunes to human activity or mere coincidence. For example, they claim that the descending summer fog of 1776 during the American Revolution was atmospheric happenstance not, as Washington described, “the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men.”

Medved and his friend and collaborator, Tim Mahoney, feel otherwise. In coordination and cooperation with Heroic Films, they’re committed to “telling true stories of God acting in history, shedding light on the lives of heroic people and events that have shaped our past and inspire our future.”

A Fathom event, the movie is being released for a limited three-day engagement: June 9, 10 and 11.

You can watch the trailer here.

As Christians, we know the Lord can do anything – and has repeatedly demonstrated His willingness to step in from time to time in supernatural ways and shape, direct or determine earthly outcomes.

In the Bible, we read about God sending angels to do His bidding (2 Chronicles 32:21) in war, or literally splitting the Red Sea in two (Exodus 14:26-28) and then closing the raging, drowning waters onto Pharoah’s army. Then there was the time He stopped the sun and moon from spinning so that Joshua and the Israelites could continue fighting with the aid of daylight (Joshua 10:12-14). In the New Testament, we know that Jesus can easily control the wind and the waves (Matthew 8:23-27).

But that was then, and this is now, right? Does the Lord still intervene in the mundane affairs of men and women?

Of course He does.

Instead of seeing circumstances as matters of coincidence, we should be willing to see them as signs of God’s sovereignty. Rather than calling it luck – why not interpret it as the Lord’s perfect plan?

If you have your doubts, The American Miracle is a good place to start. If you don’t, it’s a great way to affirm and encourage your deeply held convictions.

Image credit: Heroic Films