Quotes from Peter Lillback

He is not only its omega but also its alpha, and he is and can be its omega only as he is its alpha."1

A successful leader must lead by example.

The idea of morning and evening prayer led by a military officer was part of the Virginia in which Washington was raised.40

Thus, we need the Bible as the guide to enable us to transform and purify our hermeneutical principles. The circle from the Bible to systematic theology to hermeneutics to the Bible is not a vicious circle, but a spiral of growth and progress, guided by the work of the Holy Spirit in illumination.

The skeptics who argue for Washington the Deist must explain his lifelong and heartfelt commitment to Christian missionary work.

Our purpose is to address the question of Washington's religion and to answer it in a definitive way, using Washington's own words. Was he a Christian or a Deist? 12 We believe that when all the evidence is considered, it is clear that George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist, as most scholars since the latter half of the twentieth century have claimed.

Whether as General, a private citizen, or as president, Washington never swerved from an expressed commitment to the Christian evangelistic mission to the Native Americans that was a legacy bequeathed to him by the very first Anglican settlers of the colony of Virginia.

Thus, when we interpret the Old Testament correctly, without allegory or artificial manipulation but in accordance with Jesus's own teaching, the central message on every page is Christ. That does not mean that every verse taken by itself contains a hidden allusion to Christ, but that the central thrust of every passage leads us in some way to the central message of the gospel. II.

To say Washington was a Deist—even a "soft Deist"—would imply that he did not have a problem violating his conscience each time he worshiped in his church. It is difficult to imagine how Washington, with his expressed concern for his character and his open commitment to honesty and candor, along with his sensitive conscience, could repeatedly and consistently make a public reaffirmation of a faith that he really did not believe.

What are the facts of history? And do they matter? The importance of this study is more than historical. Establishing that George Washington was a Christian helps to substantiate the critical role that Christians and Christian principles played in the founding of our nation.

The King's 1606 patent for Virginia explained that the purpose of their mission to the New World was that: So noble a work may, by the Providence of God, hereafter tend to the glorie of his divine majestie, in propagating of Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages (living in those parts) to human civility and quiet government.20

The inescapable conclusion is that Washington was a Christian.