A Shining City on a Hill

In the spring of 1630, some 1,000 Puritans sailed to America, led by John Winthrop who would later serve as the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. While at sea, Winthrop wrote “A Model of Christian Charity” which contained their reasons and goals for establishing the new colony, chief of which was “that we shall be as a city upon a hill”, where the nations of the earth could look upon it and say, “Lord, make us like that of New England.”

Though the Lord continued to refine these early forms of governance, both Puritans and Pilgrims carried important scriptural truths to America concerning government, liberty, and the destiny of America as a witness to the world. Several of our modern Presidents have echoed this divinely inspired “city on a hill” mandate, bringing it into our current day.

Declare:

The manifestation of Jesus and the Kingdom of Light, Life, and Truth over this nation (John 1:4).
America, your founding destiny is to be a city on a hill, upholding justice and righteousness as the light of Christ to the nations.
The Light is shining brightly and the darkness cannot extinguish or overcome it (John 1:5).
The nations will call America “blessed…a delightful land.” (Mal. 3:12).

Call forth the seed:

America, “You are a city upon a hill. The eyes of all the peoples are upon you.”

America, “you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden!”

So we say, arise and shine into your destiny in this hour (Matt. 5:14; Isa. 60:1)

Excerpt from Winthrop

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world… …And to shut this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30. “Beloved, there is now set before us life and death, good and evil,” in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep His Commandments and his ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.”