My thanks to Israel Wayne and his Facebook friend, Ed Gross, for pointing me to Christopher Columbus’s Journal where he make statements like:
”I am a most noteworthy sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy, and they have covered me completely. I have found the sweetest consolation since I made it my whole purpose to enjoy His marvellous Presence.”
and…
“It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me.”There is no q…uestion that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures”.
We are judged in the context of the times in which we live. Columbus lived in a different time. 100 years from now – if everyone is a vegetarian – we will all be considered bad people because we dared to eat other living things. The horror….
Isn’t it awesome that God does wonderful things through sinners like Columbus?! He can possibly even use a sinner like you, too! I know He’s used a sinner like me.
I didn’t realize until today that there are all kinds of people who hate Christopher Columbus. Someone posted the site reconsidercolumbusday.org on Facebook.
The site accuses him of ‘heinous crimes’, yet it gives no specific details. I searched around with a kind of sick stomach, but didn’t really find any specific crimes. I found vague allegations of him being responsible for the slave trade because of his trading sugar, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I did just find this @ http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/110669/christopher_columbus_day_is_a:
He was responsible for slavery: Columbus wasn’t motivated by a desire to explore and learn, he was motivated by greed and by the money to be made in the slave trade. His slavery begot more slavery because of the desire for sugar and led to the atrocities of the Middle Passage (taking Africans from their homes forcibly as part of the Atlantic Slave Trade).
On October 12, 1492 (the first day he encountered the native people of the Americas), Columbus wrote in his journal: “They should be good servants …. I, our Lord being pleased, will take hence, at the time of my departure, six natives for your Highnesses.” These captives were later paraded through the streets of Barcelona and Seville when Columbus returned to Spain.
This has disturbed me today. I prayed about it on my way home from work because it is so troubling to me. I love your post, it feels an answer to prayer. But i do wonder about the above journal entry, about taking back 6 servants, but I see they left out some of the quote.
Let’s see, was that the same Columbus who killed Indians, enslaved them, and forced them to work in mines?
I guess that was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, too.