God Protected the United States with the Wind

RV127-02

Before John is shown the consequences of breaking the seventh seal on the scroll which is held by the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit inserts a parenthesis in the form of chapter 7. This insert between the sixth and seventh seals gives additional information on conditions which will be existing during the tribulation years. God is going to use the force of wind and its effects on the weather to execute certain judgments under the seventh seal once it is broken.

The French Attack the New World

Now, France proceeded to send half of its Navy (some 70 vessels) under the command of the Duc D'Anville, to lay waste to the whole English seacoast from Nova Scotia to Georgia in North America. The French slipped through the English blockade, and on June 20th, 1746, were on their way to the new world to attack the English colonies. As the French crossed the Atlantic, they ran into a prolonged calm – no winds. So, they encountered a prolonged delay in crossing the Atlantic due to these becalmed seas, and then we're struck with just the opposite. God brought down upon them a severe wind with lightning and thunder, and the result was that several ships were disabled. Furthermore, at this point in time, a disease (a plague) broke out among the French sailors so that many of them died on the way over. Furthermore, this storm shattered the French ships, so by August 26th, only 12 major vessels and 41 others remaining together of the original 70. On September 2nd, 1746, another violent storm resulted in the loss of several more ships to the French.

Finally, the Duc D'Anville, and what he had left of his fleet, reached Halifax in the New World. He had anticipated that he would find reinforcements at Halifax. A squadron of French ships had been sent from the West Indies to rendezvous with him at that point, preceding the attack on the English colonies. Because of the becalmed waters (the lack of wind) that slowed them down on the Atlantic, and then the delay with the violent storms, and then the delays with the disease that had hit them, the people who were waiting for the Duc finally gave up, and they left. So, now the Duc D'Anville finds himself in Halifax, minus a substantial portion of his reinforcements.

During all this time, in the summer of 1746, the New England colonists had been gathering in intensive prayer groups. They knew what was coming. All over the New England states, Christians were gathering in prayer, seeking deliverance from the Catholic forces that were coming. The Duc D'Anville, when he assessed his situation and realized the desperate straits in which he found himself, became so depressed with the loss of ships; the loss of sailors; and, the lack of the reinforcements that should have been waiting for him, that on September 15th, he died. History records for us that there was a strong suspicion that he poisoned himself. Another commander of the French immediately replaced him. As he grasped the situation, a few days later, he committed suicide. So, the French commanders were dropping like flies.

The third French commander took over, and he decided to attack Annapolis to save something out of this expedition. So, he sent me to shore to recruit French and Indians to aid them in that attack. But before they could hoist anchor and set sail, another 2,000 or 3,000 died from another epidemic disease that hit the French sailors. Finally on October 13th, 1746, the French expedition, such as it was, set sail to attack Annapolis, and to break that northern anchor point so that they could sweep down and just roll the English colonies like ten-pins before them.

That was October 13th. On October 16th, the New England colonies gathered by government proclamation in a day of fasting and prayer for deliverance from the French, which were now immediately upon them. The night of October 16th, guess what happened to the French fleet? The worst storm they had yet encountered hit them at that point with the result that they lost; scattered; or, had destroyed all but a few vessels of the 70 that had left France. They gather these few together; the put everybody on board that they could gather up; and, they limped back to France.

A New England pastor, the Reverend Jonathan French, in reviewing this act of divine providence, paraphrased Moses' words, which we have in Exodus 14:13, as he preached to the New England colonists, rejoicing in this salvation at the hand of God through the force of wind. Exodus 14:13 says, "And Moses said unto the people (as they faced the Red Sea and the pursuing army of Pharaoh), 'Fear not; stand still; and, see the salvation of the Lord which He will show you today." So, the Reverend Jonathan French summed up what God had done for them by saying, "Thus, New England stood still, and saw the salvation of God." This is one of the tremendous preservations of what was to become the United States through an act of God using the force of wind.

The Revolutionary War

Now, the British had held Boston for a year-and-a-half, and they were well entrenched in it. There was another peninsula-like projection of land, and it had two important points on it. The farthest one from Boston was called Dorchester Heights. What General Washington decided to do was to bring the cannon that they had brought from Fort Ticonderoga, and set it up here on this elevation, which would enable them from there to bomb the city of Boston. He concluded that the British general would immediately send soldiers over to neutralize Dorchester Heights, because Boston was in such a vulnerable position, as well as the ships which were out in the harbor that the British had positioned as part of their control of the city of Boston.

So, Washington's plan was to start a bombardment from Dorchester Heights that would force the British commander to send an amphibious operation to remove the Americans from Dorchester Heights. In the meantime, they would have reduced their forces here in Boston. At that point, General Washington planned to storm up the peninsula, and to trap the rest of the British in the peninsula on Boston, and to exterminate them.

This plan was a tremendous well-thought-out plan, because the 4,000 men that Washington was going to send up this peninsula would have been able to have destroyed the major portion of the British military forces in the new world. Such a maneuver, if successful, could have ended the American Revolution in victory at that point. We're talking about March of 1776. They haven't even signed the Declaration of Independence yet, which was done the following July the 4th.

So, that was the plan. What they thought is that the British would, of course, try to come storming up Dorchester Heights, and they were going to now face what had become a well-trained, highly motivated group of American troops. It was going to be a rerun, as a matter of fact, of what had taken place at Bunker Hill.

The problem was that you can't put artillery up on an exposed height like that, because it can very quickly be blown off by either the naval vessels or by the guns from Boston. What they had to do was dig them in. That's the normal procedure. But this is in the winter. The ground is frozen solid. There's no way for them to be able to dig the pieces in. That was a key factor in the success of this operation.

One of the officers in General Washington's staff, while they were pondering this problem, visited one of the other officers, and was looking at some of the books that the officer had on military matters, and found in one of those books a diagram for a fortification (a protective wooden barrier) that the French had designed called the chandelier. I was basically a wooden rack upon which they then put bundles of logs which had been strapped together three feet thick and four feet long, and they would just stretch them across these racks. This was called a chandelier. So, what this made was a barrier that was just impenetrable to a cannon ball. When he saw that, he grabbed the book; rushed out of the officers' tent to General Washington; and, said, "General, I've got the solution. We don't have to dig in the artillery pieces. We'll build these chandeliers around them to protect them.

General Washington immediately gave the order to build the structures. The problem was how to get them up there to Dorchester height before the British knew what was going to happen, and to blow them off before they could ever get the chandelier in place.

Well, in a clear moonlit night, some 3,000 men began transporting these chandeliers to protect the cannon that they had put on Dorchester Heights. A slight breeze developed that night, the first act of God in wind. And the breeze was blowing away from Boston, and thus carrying whatever sounds they may have made, in the process of constructing the chandeliers, away from the British. At 3:00 in the morning, the work was completed. The 3,000 men who had put up the fortification were now removed, and 2,500 fresh American troops passed through them, and positioned themselves to repel the attack that they expected the next morning.

When dawn arose the next morning, the British lookouts in Boston looked across there, and were amazed at what they saw on Dorchester Heights. They could not believe the fortifications that had taken place overnight. One of the British officers said that it would take 15,000 to 20,000 men to erect something like that in so short a period of time. Well, the Americans now had their protection, so they opened fire with their cannon. And under the bombardment, the first thing that sailed was the British fleet out of Boston Harbor. Now, with one blow, they had gotten rid of a serious threat to their invasion of Boston. General William Howe, who was the officer in charge, indeed did just exactly as General Washington thought he would do. He ordered two forces of 2,000 men each to be transported in the longboats to attack Dorchester Heights on the next tide. They had to wait for the proper tide in these channels to be able to get across there.

While they're waiting for the tide to turn, suddenly the sky turns black, and a wind arose here in the harbor that was more violent than any of the people who lived there had ever experienced before in their lifetime. The hurricane velocity drove the snow all night laterally across the waters, so an amphibious operation was absolutely impossible. The next morning, General Howe decided that the Americans had now had too much time to solidify their position on Dorchester Heights, so he decided to give up the attack, and instead decided to move out. He would have had to make a frontal attack up that hill. He knew that, with the entrenchment that the Americans had had time to devise, that would be a very costly maneuver. He would have lost so many troops – and troops which he could not replace in this country. Every British soldier had to come from across the seas.

So, the result was that Boston was now untenable to the British, and on March 10th, 1776, they hurriedly evacuated the city by sea, leaving behind much valuable military material. So, here's another example, at a critical point in the history of the United States, where God clearly use the wind to secure a victory for the Americans without the loss of a single life, which was so important to the Americans when enlistments were so low and so critical, and at this point in time where the Americans needed a good boost in morale. God came through, and the nation was preserved for what it was to become.

The Rescue at Brooklyn Heights

So, General Howe, on August 22nd, 1776, brought in 20,000 soldiers to attack General Washington's 8,000 soldiers on Brooklyn. The battle took place, and in five days' time, the Americans suffered 1,500 casualties, and they were driven back up the western end of Long Island, up toward a section of Brooklyn called Brooklyn Heights, which bordered on the East River. Across the East River was Manhattan Island. The result of General Howe's attack was that the Americans were bottled up against the East River, and this was a substantial portion of something like 6,500 soldiers who were still left of that original force, which was a substantial portion of all the American military force. On the other side of the East River, in Manhattan Island, 12,000 American soldiers were stationed.

Well, the final assault was expected to come on August 27th, but nothing developed. This gave the Americans a chance to regroup, and to think about this a little more. As things now stood, a substantial part of the whole American (some 6,500 men) were trapped here against the East River, facing three-to-one odds against them. The British call for their ships to come into Upper New York Bay, and to seal off the mouth of the East River. That would closed the American encirclement completely. Now the American rear would have also been cut off. So, the order went out for the ships to do that.

The Americans waited all day on August 28th for the final British attack. But Howe made no move to attack the outnumbered, and now indeed frightened, Americans. And lo and behold, in steps the almighty sovereign God. For late on August 28th, a cold pelting rain came up on a northwest wind, which went directly against the British ships which were trying to make their way to block off the mouth of the East River. This terrific violent wind completely prevented the British ships from sealing off the East River, and to establish a line behind the American rear. Again, an act of God had come into the picture.

General, Washington still was faced with the fact that he had 6,500 men in a trap. To lose so large a part of the Continental Army would have almost certainly ended the war of the independence right there. So, Washington came up with a brilliant plan. It was a desperate plan. He decided that what he would do was to evacuate his troops from Brooklyn Heights across the East River to the other side, to the western end of Manhattan Island, where Americans waited for him. This was one mile across the East River at that point, as General Washington's officers pointed out to him. That meant a two-mile round trip, and they would be sitting ducks for the British artillery and the British guns, which would move in behind them at that point immediately. But Washington decided to proceed, perhaps as the result, again, of a time of prayer, which he was in the habit of practicing as he had to make these military decisions.

So, he directed the fishermen from Massachusetts that he had among his troops who were still on the Brooklyn Heights side. These men were expert oarsmen. He directed them to collect all the small boats that they could up and down the East River. Then all night long, they proceeded, in the boats that they had gathered, to row these 6,500 men trapped in Brooklyn Heights across the East River to the other side. After about midnight, the hand of God came in again relative to the wind, because what wind had been up at that time suddenly died down. So, the water became mirror-calm, with the result now that they could load the boats with more men so that the gunnels were just barely above the water, which they could not do when the wind was creating waves, for it would have swamped them. So, the evacuation was sped up by that process.

The night was a clear, well-lit, moonlight night, yet the British never saw one of the boats out there, nor heard a single sound from the Americans. The Americans, of course, maintained a rear guard area so that the British could see that they were there, and they deliberately let themselves be seen so that the British thought that all was well – that they were still there.

Well, the worst thing was yet ahead of them, because as dawn began to break, and they began to see that rosy glow on the horizon, General Washington realized that he needed three more hours to finish the evacuation. They could see that it was going to be a dazzling, beautiful, clear day. The remaining men in Brooklyn Heights would be doomed, including General Washington. But again, in comes the hand of God. Suddenly, a gentle wind comes up, and what should come rolling across the river but a fog of an intensity such as amazed everybody who made a record of it? They said, "You could not see somebody who was three yards ahead of you." This fog moved in, and it completely covered the area of the Americans; covered the area in which the British were set; and, covered the whole river and the other shore. So, it was a dramatic smokescreen. It was the thing that, in a later military operations, we had the capacity to call down artillery shells which would lay down a smokescreen.

So, God with the wind, lay down a smokescreen for General Washington. They kept paddling back and forth, taking the rest of the men, the last of the army that was still on the other side. Finally, the last man was in the boat and General Washington got into the boat, too. They started paddling out across the East River to Manhattan Island. As they began moving out, everything reversed in the wind. Just as quickly as it has come, the fog began to dissipate. God was really making a dramatic finish of this one. He was making it clear that he had put it there, and He was pulling it out. And the thing just dissipated, and suddenly, the British looked and realized that there was no rear guard holding. They charged in to see what was happening. They discovered that there were no American troops there at all. They came to the shore. They saw the boat with Washington in it, and they started shooting away, but the Americans were out of range. And they got across safely with that whole contingent of men.

Once again, God used women to execute His perfect will and to preserve the Continental Army to free his future client nation from England into victory which was to come.

The Defeat of General Lord Cornwallis

Well, as it so happened, the day before the British ships arrived at the mouth of the river, the French, who were now the allies of the Americans, had already arrived on the scene. The result was that the French sealed off the York River. Now the Americans had dug trenches by which they leapfrogged gradually closer and closer to the city of Yorktown, where their artillery would reach. The French, on the other flank, had the British pinned up against the York River, and the French fleet at the rear, closing the encirclement.

Well, when the British Admiral Graves saw the situation, he made contact with the French fleet, and the battle began. However, in the ensuing battle, the British, again providentially under the hand of God, sustained enormous damage – such damage to their ships that they had to turn and go back to New York for repairs, leaving Cornwallis behind in the trap. The Americans now had this man, and a major portion of the British forces, in a locked in position. Now it was up to General Cornwallis to come up with a plan to evacuate his men and save the day. So, he decided to pull another Brooklyn Heights deal. In his mind, he said, "We'll do what Washington did, crossing the East River. We will get boats, and we will cross the York River over to Gloucester on the other side, and we'll escape up the peninsula, and escape this trap completely.

Well, Cornwallis decided to make this move on the night of October 16th, 1781. He began the crossing. All went well. Nobody was aware of what they were doing – secretly moving out of Yorktown across the river. They had one-third of their troops across (something like 2,000 men across) when suddenly a violent storm erupted up the York River. I mean, it was so desperate that it was all they could do to keep the boats from swamping, and the men from drowning. And the result was further crossings were absolutely impossible. When the storm subsided, it was too late to get the rest of the men across. So, Cornwallis ordered the 2,000 who had escaped to Gloucester to come on back, and to concentrate his forces in the city of Yorktown. At daybreak, the Americans had now been able to maneuver themselves in through their trenches, and through capturing strong points along the British lines, such that they were now close enough to pour down an artillery barrage. At daybreak, they did exactly that. They knew that now the British could not escape.

Well, Cornwallis took this until about noon, and then he raised the white flag and surrendered. At this point, everyone knew that the war for independence had been won, although it would take two more years for the thing to wind down. The loss to the British at this point, because of that night storm on the river, was too much. It was too great. They never were able to recover from it. General Washington was well aware of the fact that this had been the hand of God that had preserved the nation, and had preserved the cause of independence. So, he called for a Thanksgiving Day service, and he ordered all the officers and all the men who were not on duty, that they were to attend those services as an act of praise and thanksgiving to God.

The Normand Invasion of World War II

After years of preparation, the time finally arrived in June, 1944, when the allies were ready to invade Hitler's Fortress Europe from England across the English Channel. The only question remaining was to set the date for D-Day for the landings which were to be on the Normandy coast. There were only three days in each two-week period in June of 1944 when the light and the tide conditions were both right, when this invasion could be made. There was also the additional need to have a rising full moon in a clear sky in order for the airborne operation to take place. So, that reduced actually the options to three days in any month. The question now was: which of these three days should they pick for the invasion, which had all the requirements of the wind; the tide; the sea; the sky; the moonlight; and, so on? The only three days available were June 5, 6, and 7 of 1944, and they decided to go with June the 5th.

The Germans had done a good job in preparing for the invasion. They, however, operated on one basic concept that was to prove fatal to them. They operated on the belief that the allies only invade in good weather. The Germans were on special alert as June began, because the weather on June 1st was beautiful. It was good invasion weather. The German commander, Erwin Rommel, had repeatedly told Hitler, and had repeatedly told his officers, that if the allies are not stopped on the beaches, they will not be stopped anywhere. So, the German might was concentrated to stop them on the beaches, or to suffer consequent inevitable disaster. Again, Rommel, the perceptive general that he was, was quite right.

The underwater obstacles were reinforced; the wall was reinforced; and, everything was done to make the landing almost impossible. Therefore, it was absolutely vital, if the allies were going to be able to make this kind of a landing at all, for it to be a landing that caught the Germans by surprise. They had to have time to overcome those underwater obstacles – to cut through them. They had to have time to be able to go inland, and to get by the gun emplacement and the bunkers that had been built. So, again, a volume of prayer went up all over England and the United States, as everybody knew that the time for this invasion was coming.

On June 5th, 1944, the order was given to go. So, the troops started coming down to staging areas on the southern English coast, and the airborne units started taking their positions, and the machinery was in motion. Some of the ships were already at sea on their way across. However, on June 3rd, there was an imminent serious breakdown in the weather which was reported to the supreme commander, General Dwight Eisenhower. He was told that there was going to be a serious breakdown on the channel weather on June 5th, 1944. There was a series of three low pressure areas that had developed which strung out from Scotland all the way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland.

Sure enough, the result was that the worst storm (the worst weather picture) at that time of the year in 40 or 50 years developed. The allied leaders were told to expect hurricane-like channel winds. They were told that this would exist until June 7th. So, this would include June 5, 6, and 7 – the key days they needed to make this landing, and hopefully to be successful. They were told that the total cloud cover would be between 500 and 1,000 feet, and they needed at least 2,000 or 3,000 feet of altitude – of height in the clouds, or the bombing of the airplanes would be greatly restricted. Operation Overlord, as this was called, was simply stalled. Well, the gale force winds developed, and the ships that had already gone to sea were ordered on June 5th to turn back and come back to England. If the weather did not break, the ideal time for landing would be lost that month.

The danger was that security had now been breached to the extent that the men had been informed. They were told that they were ready. All these men knew what was happening. The word had gone out to all the commanders. Now it was going to be very difficult to stop this operation; to turn back; and, for the Germans not to get the word, "Aha, they are going to land in Normandy, not at Calais. And if the Germans had concentrated at Normandy, there's no way the allies could have made that invasion.

Well, the result of this storm led to a serious miscalculation on the part of the Germans. It was the worst storm in 20 years. German Commander Rommel decided that, since the allies only invaded in good weather, they're not going to invade in a storm like this. This kind of a gale wind storm for 20 years – they're not going to touch it. So, Rommel left his headquarters at the Atlantic Wall to go home to Germany for his wife Lucie's birthday. They were going to celebrate her birthday, and they had a party scheduled for June 6th, 1944. Isn't that marvelous – that what later proved to be the day of the invasion should have proven to be the day of Lucy's birthday? So, there was a high motivation for General Rommel, who had gotten a new pair of shoes for Lucy, to go home to her party. Everything was breaking loose on the channel. There was no need for him to stay there.

Furthermore, most of the German commanders on the Atlantic wall received the same reports of the widespread violent weather, and its expected continuance, so that they dismissed any possibility of an invasion, and the alert was relaxed all up and down the French coast. This wind (this storm) was being used by God to lull the German commanders to sleep. Many of them were not at their posts. The word did get out to one double-agent in the French Resistance. He went to the Germans and he said, "They're coming. They're going to come June 5, 6, or 7." When the Germans got this information, the intelligence people said, "He's crazy. They're not going to make a landing in weather like this."

On Sunday evening, June 4th, the allied commanders were given a briefing. Now the storm was moving in and raging. The commanders were told that there had been a dramatic, unexpected weather change over the North Atlantic. There had developed a high pressure area as a cold front had moved through, and that would move through the channel area on June 6th, and there would be a brief period of 24 to 36 hours of good weather as the cold front moved through. So, from the afternoon of June 5th until sometime late on Tuesday, June 6th, they had a divinely prepared hole in the weather. A divine wind had come through for them.

So, the final decision was delayed until Monday morning, June 5th. At that point, about 4 o'clock in the morning, General Eisenhower gathered with his officers to get the weather briefing from the Scotsman who was in charge of the meteorological briefings in the division, and to get the final word. In the World War II series by "Time Life Books," the one entitled "The Second Front," on page 63, there's a description of that meeting that morning:

"And yet the final irrevocable decision to launch the assault had to be delayed for one last weather report at the commander's meeting scheduled for 4:15 on Monday morning, June 5th. 'Our little camp was shaking and shuddering under wind of hurricane proportions,' Eisenhower wrote it of the time. And the accompanying rain seemed to be traveling in horizontal streaks. It seemed impossible in such conditions that there was any reason for even discussing the situation. The meeting convened:

"'Gentlemen, Stagg began (he's the meteorologist), no substantial change has taken place since last time. But as I see it, the little that has changed is in the direction of optimism. He said that the fair weather interval would extend through all southern England during the night, and would probably last into the afternoon of Tuesday.' Stagg subsequently wrote: Immediately after I'd finished, the tension seemed to evaporate, and the Supreme Commander and his colleagues became as new men. General Eisenhower had sat, turned sideways, facing me, taut and intense. Now a broad smile broke over his face. 'OK,' Eisenhower said finally, 'We'll go.' With these words, the die was cast. The signal was flashed to the fleet: 'Proceed with Operation Neptune.'" Operation Neptune was the first part of Operation Overlord, which was to capture the beaches.

So, the word was put out for the invasion to go, and to be on again. So, as you know, the allies indeed came across the widest part of the channel, and they caught the Germans completely by surprise. They were not prepared at all. The main commanders were away, and Hitler was asleep, and had left orders not to wake him up until 10 o'clock the next morning. Here, the planes are coming in. They're dropping the parachute troops. The gliders are coming in with the troops. Everything is breaking up all along these five beachheads that were established. The air people got in. They dropped behind the German troops. In any case, here again, it was the wind used by God that caught the Germans completely off guard. And then God slips in a little favorable window of opportunity, and with that divine wind, the cause of Nazi Germany, that brutal threat to Western Christian civilization, was brought down. The hand of God created a storm that preserved our nation.

The Kamikaze

So, the Japanese commanders decided that they needed to revise the concept of the divine wind once more. So, they created the kamikaze corps of pilots who would fly planes which were nothing but huge bombs, and that they would dive those planes against the American fleet, and sink the fleet, and thus make every plane that they had left count. They restored the concept of a divine power that uses wind. Here it would be the wind of the airplane.

But the only God that dispenses a true divine wind is the living God, our God. As we have seen, the divine wind that the Japanese were depending upon was the wind of Satan, and it proved to be a false reed to lean upon. Instead, God turned and brought the wind once more of the might of the American military forces, this nation, with its Christian heritage and orientation, and that was the wind that finally destroyed that brutal empire that had been imposed upon the world.

God's hand, as we see in Revelation, uses the wind as we see in Israel's history. God uses the wind to accomplish His purposes. As we've seen in our nation, He uses His divine wind to accomplish His purposes.

Now, in the tribulation period, it's got to be a repeat of some of these dramatic things that we have looked at so briefly tonight. Again, God is going to come in, and He's going to preserve His people, and He's going to accomplish His will through his divine wind.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1984

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