Quotes from Peter Lillback

The secret of Washington's ability to accomplish so much was his mastery of time management. Consider his statements on time. "What to me is more valuable, my time, that I most regard," he wrote to James McHenry, September 14, 1799. Similarly, he wrote to James Anderson on December 10, 1799, "… time, which is of more importance than is generally imagined.

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.

As we contemplate Washington's words and place them in his historical circumstances, it occurs to us that a man so concerned for righteousness in his army, and for military chaplains to lead his men in seeking the blessings of heaven, just might have been a praying man himself.

George Washington's Sacred Fire intends to convince you that when all the available evidence is considered, the only viable conclusion is that George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist.

Is the Judeo-Christian heritage of America a reality or an interloper aimed at suppressing the secularism of the founders? Or, is it the other way around? Are today's secularists trying to recreate the faith of our founding father into the unbelief of a Deist in order to rid our nation of Washington's holy flame of faith?

By the time George Washington was out surveying the wilderness tracts of land for Lord Fairfax, the proprietor of the Northern Neck's vast expanse, the Indians were no longer an immediate menace, since they had been driven far back into the forests by the previous generations of armed colonists.

Apparently Washington's adage of "deeds not words" was utilized to convey to his grandson the importance of the Sabbath, the significance of regular worship, and the value of the reading of the scriptures. Conway's charges are eviscerated in light of the testimony of the one who was allegedly not evangelized by Washington!

Skeptics today often claim that George Washington was not a real Christian, but in our view, the burden of proof is on them to explain why he was consistently in church throughout his life, why the churches he was part of were entirely orthodox in terms of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ, and why he attended churches where the Bible was regularly preached on Sunday.

Indeed, given the facts, the burden of proof is not to prove that Washington was a Christian; the burden of proof is to prove that he was a skeptic who nevertheless sought to act like a Christian believer!

If there ever was a time when character mattered, it was in Washington's role in the birth of America. If he had operated with a different set of moral values and a different personal character, America would have had a king or dictator instead of a federal Constitution and representative government.

Although Boller entirely ignores them, there are numerous Gospel phrases in Washington's writings from the teachings of Jesus, the one whom Washington publicly called "the Divine Author of our Blessed Religion.

Concern for the souls of the "savages" was part of the mission into Virginia. When this courageous band had been sent off from England, the Reverend Mr. William Crashaw reminded the colonists, "that the end of this voyage is the destruction of the devil's kingdom, and the propagation of the Gospel."19