If William Bradford hadn't written it down, we wouldn't know.

We wouldn't know about the 66-day voyage. We wouldn't know that half the Pilgrims died that first winter. We wouldn't know why they came, what they sacrificed, or what they built with the Wampanoag people.

History belongs to those who document it. 

As my father, Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, used to say: "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read."

But someone has to write those books. Someone has to pick up a pen in the midst of survival, in the midst of governing, in the midst of building a new world—and preserve the story for those who come after.

The Book That Almost Disappeared

William Bradford was the governor of Plymouth Colony for over 30 years. But between 1630 and 1651, while leading a fledgling colony through survival and growth, he did something else: he wrote it all down.

Of Plymouth Plantation is our only comprehensive eyewitness account of the Pilgrims' story. Bradford documented the persecution in England, the escape to Holland, the agonizing decision to cross the Atlantic, the 66-day voyage, the devastating first winter, the treaty with the Wampanoag, and that first harvest celebration we now call Thanksgiving.

Without this manuscript, we'd have fragments. Rumors. Legends that fade with each generation.

But here's what makes this story even more remarkable: the manuscript almost vanished forever.

During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers occupied Boston's Old South Church, where Bradford's manuscript was stored. When they left, the book was gone—likely stolen and carried back to England as a war trophy.

For nearly 70 years, it was lost. Historians knew it had existed because others had quoted from it, but the original? Vanished.

Then, in the 1850s, a researcher discovered it in the library of the Bishop of London. How it got there, no one knows for certain. But there it sat—the single most important document of America's founding story—gathering dust in a British archive.

After decades of diplomatic negotiation, the manuscript was finally returned to Massachusetts in 1897—over 120 years after it disappeared. 

Providence preserved what war tried to steal.

As a publisher, this hits me in my bones. A book written by hand, in the margins of survival, carried across an ocean, stolen, lost, found, and returned. The words Bradford wrote by candlelight in Plymouth Colony survived war, theft, and centuries of chaos—because the story was too important to die.

Walking Through History

Last Friday, I walked through the Wittenberg Doors at Dayspring Christian Academy's "Thanksgiving Exposed" event, and I finally understood what we're really celebrating on Thursday.

It wasn't just a harvest festival.

It was the culmination of a 1,500-year battle for the freedom to worship the God of the Bible—biblically and freely—without a king or state controlling how, when, or what we could believe.

Dayspring didn't just tell me about the Pilgrims. They walked me through the entire divine setup—from Christ to Paul to the Reformation to Plymouth. Station by station, century by century, I watched the hand of God orchestrate a 1,500-year plan for Biblical worship to flourish in a new world.

The Gospel Goes to the Gentiles

Last year, I traveled with Dayspring to Greece and Turkey, tracing Paul's second missionary journey. We walked where Paul walked. We stood in the ruins of ancient churches. We saw firsthand how the Gospel spread from Jerusalem to the Gentile world.

Paul didn't just preach salvation—he unleashed a revolution. The message that transformed hearts in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth would eventually reshape the Western world.

But here's what hit me at Dayspring: I was seeing where that seed LANDED 1,500 years later.

From Christ to Paul to the Gentiles—the Gospel moved across continents and centuries, setting in motion a divine plan that would culminate in a small group of English Separatists boarding a ship called the Mayflower.

The Word in Their Hands

For over a thousand years, the Bible was locked away in Latin—accessible only to clergy, controlled by the institutional church, interpreted by those in power.

Ordinary people couldn't read God's Word for themselves. They had to trust what they were told. And if what they were told contradicted Scripture? Too bad. The church held the keys, and the state enforced the church's authority.

Then came John Wycliffe in the 1380s. He believed every person should be able to read the Bible in their own language. He translated Scripture into English—and was condemned as a heretic for it. Decades after his death, his bones were dug up and burned as a final insult.

Then came William Tyndale in the 1520s. He picked up where Wycliffe left off, translating the Bible into early modern English with a passion for accuracy and accessibility. "I will cause a boy that driveth the plough," Tyndale said, "to know more of the Scripture than the church leaders do."

For that crime, he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.

But the Word was out. The Bible was in English. And once people could read it for themselves, everything changed.

This wasn't about "religious freedom" in some vague, generic sense. This was about Biblical worship—the right to read, interpret, and follow God's Word without a king or pope standing between the believer and the Bible.

Tomorrow: Blood, Ink, and the Doors That Changed Everything

Wycliffe translated. Tyndale died for it. But someone still had to multiply it.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about the invention that changed everything—the printing press—and the man who used it to ignite a revolution. I stood in Wittenberg on the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses, and I'll never forget what I witnessed.

I'll tell you how the Reformation unleashed both freedom and fury. How a group of English believers were spied on, arrested, and driven from their homeland—all because they insisted on worshiping the God of the Bible biblically, without a king telling them how to do it.

And I'll tell you about the journey that followed: from Scrooby to Holland to a cramped ship crossing a brutal ocean with 100 souls aboard.

The setup is complete. Tomorrow, the sacrifice begins.