The Shocking Truth About Thanksgiving

Lance: Greetings today, and greetings all across America and for those of you that are around the world watching and listening today, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s the special day that I believe Godgives us an opportunity to celebrate his goodness. Now I had a little debate here with my team. I said, I’m putting on my festive Thanksgiving shirt and they said, no, this is not a Thanksgiving shirt. But I say it is a Thanksgiving shirt can’t you see those Christmassy colors on the sleeves.It’s Robert Graham, Annabelle got this for me for, I guess for New Year’s for a party once. But I thought it would be good for. But any evident, well, I’m celebrating is what I’m wearing. I wear my celebration shirt today. 

I want to talk to you about the idea Thanksgiving. Mercedes is going to give you something I did not know, which is the actual history of the Thanksgiving origin. Which I didn’t realize the story going back to America’s origin. It wasn’t about the pilgrims; it was actually about gratitude from George Washington celebrating the goodness and benevolence of God and the providence of the founding of America. I didn’t know that. Because all these all these politically correct cultural Marxist trying to rob us of the pilgrim story. Well, forget the pilgrim story for the moment. The origin of Thanksgiving. You’re going to find out about in a minute, but I’m going to give you the real origin which is God being thanked for his preservation of the United States. It goes right to a biblical concept.

Grab your bible, if you have a bible. This is very important. We’re going to do this right now. First Thessalonians chapter 5. Want you to see the verse right here. We’re going to go to chapter 5 verse 18. Giving you a moment to get your Bible. Come on. Get your Bible. Get a pen. Mark it up. And here we go. The apostle Paul writing to the Thessalonians. He says this, verse 16. “Rejoice always”. Rejoice always. That’s a command. “Pray without ceasing. Don’t quit”. That’s the secret to keeping your joy up is the fact that God hears and answers your prayers and in everything, give thanks for this is God‘s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise the prophetic utterances. Just examine everything carefully and hold fast to what is good.

Now, why would I be reading these verses? Because it’s believed by scholars that what is being laid out here and I’ll read you the exact notes that I have. These verses may suggest elements of an early Christian service of worship starting with rejoicing, with prayer and then Thanksgiving,and then the manifestation of charismatic gifts of prophecy would occur. So, the prayer meeting would start to be Thanksgiving. There’d be prayer and then there’d be prophecy to edify and encourage people going back into Thanksgiving and prayer. It was the loop of the early Christian life which is how they could rejoice always. Because they had this as a part of their lifeline.Indeed, you enter into his Presents with Thanksgiving. Why? One of these days we’re going to get my keyboard over here.

Mercedes: It works.

Lance: And I want to tickle these ivories and I enter his courts with Thanksgiving in my heart. See, I enter his courts with praise and I will say this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice for he has made me glad. Thanksgiving is a state of mind that actually becomes a magnet. I encourage you to think about this. I certainly have found it to be the case. And my staff will remind me of this and my wife will reinforce it. That when I start off on the wrong foot, a lot of the steps that follow are off balance. But when I start off right, start off with Thanksgiving, start off with the mind of Christ, start off with a grateful heart, grateful for all that God has done. It sets a different atmosphere around me.

Now this is a very powerful spiritual principle. I want you to imagine, you have angels that are assigned to you. Those angels operate in a certain atmosphere. They operate in the realm of faith,but they operate in the realm of God‘s way of thinking. God‘s way of is in convection and cussing and complaining and stumbling and blaming and justifying and defending. God‘s way is a way that is a pathway of praise of Thanksgiving. Where God is enthroned by our worship over like the Psalmist says, over the floods. Which means, I remember one time I was in my church and we were reading Jack Hayford that talked about God‘s enthroned over the floods as we worship.He said, imagine that when you acknowledge God over the storm God stretches out his canopy over the storm and suddenly calm comes upon the situation because God being center being enthroned over the situation begins to decree and rule over what’s happening. The apostle Paul says, in everything give thanks.

Now this is a challenge. Remember years ago, those of you that are charismatics of my age. Remember Marilyn Carruthers a guy wrote a book was a best seller. It was called prison to praise I think was the name of it and it was about how Thanksgiving and praise actually was a catalyst for God‘s intervention, God‘s miracles and God showing up that your praise actually creates an avenue for God‘s divine intervention. So, Merlin Carruthers, this was a new idea back then that we were just discovering worship in church. We weren’t doing hymns, we were doing spontaneous songs and singing these new choruses and such.

I want to give you an example of what he’s talking about. We’ll go to the Book of Acts here and it’s a bit of a mystery to me as I think about it. But see, Paul and Silas, they go into a city Philippi and they go and they preach and somehow, the anointing that was on the apostle Paul was such that it brought him right to a confrontation with a well first it drew into a place of prayer which was in verse 13 of chapter 16. He is drawn to a place of prayer. We sat down and began to the women who were assembled and a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics and a worshiper of God was listening and the Lord opened her heart. So, here you have a prominent businesswoman Mercedes, a rich entrepreneurial, gentile, female, is the first recipient of the gospel in the city of Philippi.

So, they’re going to prayer and they go to the place of prayer where they pray and where they praise and where they have Thanksgiving and God is begin to show up and while they’re going, a demonized girl intercepts them. She’s got a spirit in her of divination and she brought her master’s prophet by her fortune telling. So, this is a weird thing. This is almost like a word of knowledge that was predictive in some way that people would bet on stuff she said and they made money based on her predicting and she starts speaking out. These are men. These men are bond servants of the most high God who proclaimed to the way of salvation.

Now, here’s an interesting idea. Not everything that is said even if it’s accurate is coming from God. Because what she said is accurate. But it was the wrong spirit. It was a spirit of divination.The devil knows who you are. And so, the spirit of divination is basically saying these men are God‘s ambassadors. And what she was doing in the minds of the people is linking her with them. And listen to this. She continued doing this for many days. How many as many days? 5 days, 6days, 7 days. And Paul’s putting with this but then he’s greatly annoyed and he turns, spins around and points to the spirit, not to the girl but to the spirit. He said, ‘I command you in the name of Jesus, come out of her.’ This is fascinating and it came out at that very moment. He literally commanded a demon of divination out of a woman who was following them.

Now, the problem was when she lost the gift. She lost the ability to predict stuff, so people can make money. You see the fascinating story here? In that moment, her masters saw their hope of prophet was God. These Jewish guys just messed up their magic beings over here that could make them a fortune. So, they dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities, brought them before the chief magistrates and said, ‘These men are throwing our city into confusion they’re turning the world upside down, they’re Jews.’ So, right away they start yelling on because they’re Jewish and they’re proclaiming customs which isn’t lawful for us to accept or to observe as Romans, they’re overthrowing the culture. You get what’s going on here?

This all ties into Thanksgiving there’s a point I’m about to make. The crowd rose up, whoo, and he got a principality cast out and the people are all upset because something’s out of order in the spirit realm and it just got invaded by the gospel. they rose up together and took them to the chief magistrate tore their robes off of them, proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods and they had these rods and they whack you in your back, your legs, in your back, and your buttocks and your head. Oh my gosh, and you just literally be like a whipping and then they after many blows were inflicted upon them. They threw them into prison. Commending the jailer to guard them securely. And he having received such a command threw them into the inner prison. Fastened their feet in stocks. Bleeding, injured, the victims of gross injustice.

What do you think Paul decides to do? Give me a lawyer. Does he rage? Does he yell? Does he pray invective prayers of judgement on his enemies? About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise. They’re singing hymns of Thanksgiving to God. They’re literally bringing God into the prison, into the place of their own contradiction. The prisoners could hear them and suddenly there came a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken and immediately all the doors were open. Everyone’s chains were unfath.This is quite a miracle God literally did a prison break. He not only broke the chains off of Paul and Silas, but he broke the chains off of everyone and all the doors got opened up. This is quite a statement God was making.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword was going to kill himself, because the Romans will kill you. If you lose a prisoner, you’re dead. But Paul cried out with a loud voice. “Don’t harm yourself. We’re all here”. Not one prisoner left. They all made their way into the cell where the origin of the earthquake took place and he called for lights and rushed in and trembling with fear. He fell down before Paul and Silas and after he brought them out, he says, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” It’s interesting. He’s saying, “What do I got todo to be saved?” His salvation basically, well, he wasn’t even talking about his soul necessarily. He’s talking about what I got to do to be saved out of this whole predicament. Well, they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you and your household will be saved”.

Now, he takes them into his house. He washes them. He puts bandages on them which means they were bleeding and he takes care of their wounds and immediately they baptized him, baptized his wife, baptized his kids and he brought them into his house. He put food in front of them and they all rejoice greatly with Thanksgiving because he believed God with his whole house. So, the next day when the chief magistrates sent their policemen to release those men, the jailer reported the words to Paul saying, the magistrates are sent to release you. You can go out now in peace. This is what I love about Paul that’s what Mario Murillo just wrote in his last book do not go quietly into the night. He said, they just beat us publicly, they beat us without a trial.Notice he could have been without Thanksgiving. He knew what the crime was but he didn’t let the crime dictate his state and his state allowed him to see God come in and intervene. He said,they throw into prison and they beat us without a trial and we are Romans. Oh my gosh. This freaked them out. Because you can’t do that to a Roman citizen. The punishment that you give a Roman citizen will be inflicted on you. Which meant every magistrate could have gotten beaten with rods and locked up in prison.

So, they were justifiably having a meltdown and he said, “Now you’re going to try to send us away secretly? No way. Let them come in here themselves. Meet with me right now. Let them bring me out”. Boy, did Paul have a moment with them. Now, this is the moment of justice. He’s dealing with them but he’s not going to prosecute them. He’s going to forgive them because Paul has watched God‘s intervention and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans. They came and appealed to them and when they brought them out, they begged them. Just please leave, please leave and they went out of the prison and entered the house of Lydia. The wealthy entrepreneur, and when they saw the brethren, they encouraged them and departed. The church of Philippi was made up of criminals that got out of that jail when they were acquitted. Various ones were there just for a period of time but they all got saved.

So, whichever ones were led out of jail, they joined the house church, Lydia, the wealthy woman and the jailer and his family. Paul had a church plant that came out. What was the secret? Thanksgiving. This is what I mean to tell you. When the apostle Paul said, in everything give thanks. He did not mean for everything give thanks. Big difference. You’re not thankful for the injustice. You’re not thankful for the problem. You’re thankful that in the midst of the problem, God is with you and in his providence, he is allowing you to walk through there and enthrone him over the situation.

Let me say that again because this is where Christians get screwed up. Well, I had that car accident or that person sued me or that person ripped me off. You’re telling me I’m going to be thankful. You’re thankful not for the sin. You’re thankful that in spite of that, God rules over the circumstance and God will work it out for you. Does that make sense to you? In everything, not for everything. Your attitude is thankful. So, I learned this a long time ago. When my planes and I’ve had this happen, when I had planes that are cancelled or inconvenience or delayed etcetera. I used to have a meltdown about getting places and having to get more than one plane and then one day the Lord said, “in everything give thanks”. Because you know what? For all I know Godis delaying a flight for my sake. He might know something about that flight that I don’t know. So,I don’t always have to have what I want in everything I can be thankful because God has ordained my going out and my coming.

Let me give you another interesting take. And this is a bit of a mystery verse that I find, I almost hesitated to teach it, because I’m wrestling with well, I don’t know if I would do this. Let me give you another example. In the book of Acts chapter 5, the apostles are brought to trial for preaching the gospel. Gamaliel an older Jew gets up and advises the Pharisees says, hey, be careful what you do with these guys. Remember years ago, we had some crazy conspiracy taking over here and the thing played out and it ended up being exposed. There’s some weird stuff going on with these people. You don’t want to be found fighting against God, you just don’t know what you’re dealing with. Very wise old Jew. They took his advice in verse 40, and after calling the apostles in they beat them”. Look at this, they flawed them whips and sticks.

The apostles of the Lord Jesus beaten publicly and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus. What would you do? On America, you got lawyers, you got to get social media, you go get people to boycott them, you got to go run for office. What did the apostles do? They went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing Thanksgiving that they had been considered worthy to suffer this shame and persecution for the name of Jesus. Now that’s a strange one.That’s why I hesitated, because I thought wait a second. Somehow, they saw the injustice as being strangely a compliment that they were able to step into the same anointing as Jesus, get beaten as Jesus was and that God counted them worthy of being his representatives of his message that they would endure the same affliction as the Holy Spirit had to endure through Jesus. And when they left them, they were rejoicing. They weren’t bitter. They weren’t angry. They weren’t embarrassed. They were celebrating in everything, not for everything.

Give thanks, and by the way, every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on disobeying what they were told with bold civil disobedience, preaching Jesus in spite of what authority said. There is your civil disobedience in the right spirit. How do you know you’re in the right spirit? If you can do it with Thanksgiving. If you can do it without an attitude. I’m going to give you one more, because what I’m talking about is in everything give thanks. Not necessarily for, but if you can position yourself and say, Lord, I don’t know what’s going on right now. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t think this is you, but I’m not going to position myself in negativity and in agitation and in anger. I’m going to position myself in thanking you that you rule over the situation that you are in my life, that you’re causing all things to work together for good. I’m thank you that spite of what it feels like and looks like you are in control of my going out, my coming in. Hallelujah.

So, I’ll give you and as I was thinking about this, I feel like the Holy Spirit said, one more verse to give you. This is another verse for you. Jonah, the angry prophet. Jonah was called to go deliver a prophetic word to Nineveh and he didn’t want to do it. He didn’t like those people and I think he was a prophet enough to see that eventually Nineveh was going to be used as a people that would persecute his people. He saw what they were going to do in the future, and he wanted God to annihilate them. In fact, God was about to wipe that city out, but he said Jonah let him know I’m going to wipe him out. Jonah said, alright, I don’t want to go warn him. I don’t even want to tell him to go warn them. No, because I know you Lord, I know how you are, if you send me, they might repent and then they’ll, and so is this weird kind of negotiation going on in this Jewish guy’s mind. Of course, you know the story.

He tries to flee the call of God he gets aboard a ship, get stuck in the storm and then he has ownthe fact that the storm’s because he’s on board the ship. He’s out of the will of God. They throw him overboard. He’s swallowed by the great beast the whale. And he is being now wrapped around with the gastric juices of this whale. He’s in the intestines. I don’t know how he had a pocket of air to barely breathe and he’s being dragged down to the bottom of the ocean. Basically, swallowed by the judgment of his disobedience. “For you cast me the deep”, he says in verse 3 of chapter 2, “Into the heart of the sea. The current engulfed me. The waves they broke and passed over me and I said, I’ve been expelled from your sight. Nevertheless, I will look again towards your holy temple. Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me. Weeds and seaweed were even wrapped around my body and my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains all the way down to the bottom of the ocean”.

You could feel the pressure inside his body. “The earth with its bars was around me forever”. This is like death. “But you brought up my life from the pit O Lord my God. While I was fainting away”. Now watch this. “While I was fainting away in the belly of the whale, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you and to your holy temple. Those who regard vain idols forsake their own faithfulness. But I’m going to sacrifice to you with the voice of Thanksgiving”. And he says, “Thanksgiving O God. What I vowed to you and my youth I will pay. I told you I would serve you. Salvation comes from Lord. I’m thankful that you haven’t left me”. And then at that moment the Lord committed the fish to vomit Jonah up on dry land. Jonah’s Thanksgiving caused him to be expelled out of the judgment he was in. Right on schedule to go do what God called him to do.

How many disobedient Christians, backslidden Christians? You want to know the fastest way to get to where God want you to go? To stop running and say, God I’m thankful that you will not forsake me. You will not leave me alone. You’re not even leaving me now. I still have breath in my body. I will serve you I thank you that you’ve been faithful to me, and that moment the beast couldn’t handle a thankful prophet and it delivered him to his destination. Back in the will of God, the Word of the Lord came to Jonah again and said rise and go to Nineveh that great city and proclaim that which I’m going to tell you and he went and God delivered a city.

What I’m saying is, Thanksgiving delivered Paul and Silas from an unjust prison. Thanksgiving preserved the mentality of the apostles in the face of their opposition. Thanksgiving, delivered the prophet Jonah from a whale of judgement and Thanksgiving not for but in everything is the secret in all things give thanks, continue praying, continue rejoicing because God hears your prayers. Thanksgiving creates a connection with the solution and then don’t despise prophecy.Because part of what will flow out of that is you’ll start to speak out prophesy and say what Godhas given you to say. Don’t despise, because sometimes the prophets can miss it but don’t reject the prophetic as the prophetic is your lifeline to what God wants to do next.

So, that’s the word on Thanksgiving. Let’s be thankful. Be thankful. Hard to say this, but be thankful for the government that God has in the United States. Be thankful that the United States still has a government. Be thankful that we are seeing the mothers and the fathers rise up in the school boards all across America. Be thankful to 83% of those candidates that they’re telling us can never be elected, got elected. Because be thankful that there is a DeSantis. There is a Trump. There is a hope. There is a future. Be thankful that God isn’t finished with America yet and that we’re still being weighed in the balance and the verdict hasn’t come in and the signs are that a great discipline and a great awakening is happening at the same time. And the people who are thankful will be preserved through the shaking. That’s the Word of the Lord. That’s what I believe you need to know. Now Mercedes.

Mercedes: Yes sir.

Lance: George Washington was the originator as I understand that of or wasn’t Thanksgiving.

Mercedes: Well, I love what you shared and I think it dovetails into what I was think it’s just they go together. It’s amazing.

Lance: Okay.

Mercedes: So, this is a revelation that I think is like a complete hidden jewel. This is the truth about Thanksgiving. And for every person that says America’s not a Christian nation. America was never a Christian nation. For all these people who are like Christian nationalist they’re so bad. I mean that’s what it’s like today everywhere even within Christian circles. And I what you’re saying, because I think Thanksgiving is a thing that can save the nation. To me,Thanksgiving, it’s not even to me the reality is what I’m going to share with you just now is that Thanksgiving actually is not about Indians and pilgrims and even family or food or any of that.It’s not actually about that. The reason we have Thanksgiving is because it is a day set aside at the behest of Congress. Both houses of congress petition George Washington to create a day of national Thanksgiving to honor the hand of providence of God in forming our nation. Is everything you just shared of it’s that divine turning and saying thank you God for establishing this form of government that’s literally why we have Thanksgiving.

So, I want to read to you one, I’m just going to read to you the beginning line of George Washington’s Thanksgiving proclamation. He read this after they ratified is. So, it says the very beginning, “Whereas it is the duty of all nations to the providence of almighty God to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor. And whereas both houses of congress have by their joint committee requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public Thanksgiving and prayer to be observed and acknowledged with grateful hearts. And many single favors of the almighty God established by affording them an opportunity to peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness”.

Now, it goes on but this to me, it just, I mean, Lance, this one I don’t understand. I really believe God has been strategically cancelled out of America’s history and they would have people under 40 believe that God was never a part of the forming of this nation. Yet, here are our founders. Both houses of congress. Could you imagine both houses of congress today asking press Biden. We want a day set aside specifically to thank God for his role in forming this country. That is our heritage. When we say we have a great cloud of witnesses, they are standing and watching by as Christians like you and myself. Take up the role and honor that role and say no we do have a voice. We do have a place in government. We are supposed to move to places of influence.

So don’t buy into this lie. But I want to tell you so George Washington, he ends up making this proclamation but every state could have it on whatever day that they wanted. Just kind of sometime in November maybe around December they’d have it a Thanksgiving. Some States did it, some States did it. But it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln who at the behest this is really cool too, you’re talking about an entrepreneurial woman. At the behest of an entrepreneurial woman who petition multiple presidents in a row and said, please make this day of Thanksgiving a national, will you ratify it. So, after the Civil War he established it as a national holiday. So, it says that October 3rd in 1863 expressing gratitude for the pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg. President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26th, 1863.

He proclaimed the National Day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelleth in the heavens to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November by every State. So, I just want to show you the lady who is responsible for this and so we can thank this a 74-year-oldwoman Sarah Josie Fahale, and she was the editor for a magazine. So, in September 28, 1863 she wrote to him urging for a day of our annual Thanksgiving be made national as a fixed union festival. She explained, you may have observed for some years past there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day in all the States. It now needs national recognition and the authoritative fixation only to become permanently an American custom and institution.

So, here we have I love this story because a 74-year-old woman, she was the editor for Godly Ladies book is what her role was. It’s Amazing. I mean this is not the most amazing story. Come on. I know you think sometimes I nerd out on this stuff and I Calvin Coolidge it. But this to me for every single pastor in America who thinks that America that there’s a division between Church and State. I mean how can we look at Thanksgiving? I want to say this. I’m going to keep telling the story until Thanksgiving is returned to what it was originally supposed to be intended of a day of Thanksgiving to God in the preserving and forming of our nation.

Lance: And of all the times we’re talking about a cultural civil war, the destruction of America,the collapse of Godliness in this country and it’s at right after the decisive battle of Gettysburg that Abraham Lincoln says, let me use the power of government to fix an official national holiday to focus on God who has delivered us and is saving us as a nation. And let’s be thankful for his providence and his goodness. Have we become too proud, he wrote, to acknowledge the hand of him who has made us a blessed nation? Have we become so arrogant and self-sufficientthat we no longer need his aid? And that was why he made that proclamation. It is a beautiful point you’re making that Lincoln totally messed up the separation of Church and State and nobody should celebrate Thanksgiving unless they’re acknowledging the fact that it’s there.Because of a Christian woman and a president who want to thank God in a national crisis.

Mercedes: Two presidents honestly at points of national crisis, right. Because George Washington at was the first one who established it right after the forming of our nation. I mean will you talk about Thanksgiving; Thanksgiving is like the original day of prayer and should be and should be seen that way. The fact that pastors don’t even know about this. This to me is like finding a jewel.

Lance: This is actually the great Christian holiday.

Mercedes: Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

Lance: This is a great American Christian holiday.

Mercedes: Every Thanksgiving.

Lance: On the subject of Thanksgiving, being thankful. Doesn’t get any better than this, thank you Mercedes Sparks. By the way, how can people get a hold of that? I saw you follow Sadie’s in there.

Mercedes: Well, I pulled this from before the guys threw them on the screen. But if you want a copy of the proclamation, it’s just “followsadie’s.com/Thanksgiving”, and that’s George Washington’s proclamation. I mean it is you read it and I end up crying when I read stuff like this, because…

Lance: It’s beautiful and look and you put this up there on October 3rd 1789, you’ve been waiting this whole time.

Mercedes: That’s when it was ratifying.

Lance: Oh okay. Alright. Well, listen. We’re thankful for you. Every one of you. I’m thankful for you and for your partnership. By the way, it’s your giving. Your generous giving that allows us now to be able to go on the television, to be able to do podcast. We’re reaching over 800,000 people a month with uncompromised truth. Oh, sure they knocked me off at TikTok. They take200,000 of my people away on YouTube. But I’m thankful. Not for, but in the situation and I’m thankful for every one of you that helps to partner with us. Go to “Lancewallnau.com/partner”,because your partnership is what enables us to be bold and speak the truth to more people than just a home Bible study. We’re reaching millions with the uncompromising bold even at times provocative truth, because God is speaking and we are his vessels. God bless you all and I’m thankful for you.

Closing: Did you enjoy this latest episode? Please remember to share it with your friends because the more knowledge you have, the better equipped you are to navigate the world.