Nestled away in the little town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, a small congregation has just celebrated a remarkable event — the four hundredth anniversary of their church covenant. The congregation is the Church of the Pilgrimage. They are the same congregation which began exactly four hundred years ago in a little manor home in Scrooby, England. On that day, a group of separatists including William Bradford, William Brewster, John Robinson, and Richard Clifton covenanted before God and man to live honorably before the Lord in a local body committed to the purity of the doctrines of the Christian faith, notwithstanding great persecution and disapproval by the state church.

Though less than two paragraphs in length, this church covenant would be used of God to bind the hearts and lives of the members of this little assembly, and to propel them to travel across the Atlantic Ocean on a boat called the Mayflower. As Dr. Gary Marks [30th pastor in direct succession from John Robinson] has observed, the Scrooby church covenant would serve as the basis for the Mayflower Compact, one of the most significant documents of freedom in the history of Western Civilization. The church covenant and its child, the Mayflower Compact, would later influence the building of a free society under God, and even presage the Declaration of Independence itself.

As they traveled to America to plant this experiment in faith and freedom, they carried in their hands a Bible — the 1599 Geneva Bible. Powerful for its orthodox translation and inspiring footnotes, the Geneva Bible was the Scripture of the very separatist Pilgrims we honor on Thanksgiving Day — the men and women who laid the spiritual heritage of America throughout the New England colony.

The first account in history (reasonably inferred from the text) of the pilgrims bringing the Geneva Bible to the American land occurred on December 9 and 10, 1620 (old calendar), when the Pilgrims landed on Clarke Island in Plymouth harbor. December 10 was the Sabbath, so they found an anomalous, giant rock in the middle of the island, stood upon it, opened their Geneva Bibles, and worshipped God.

Three weekends ago, the Vision Forum team circled Clarke Island to remember the Pilgrims and the coming of the very special representation of the Christian faith embodied by the Pilgrim congregation which originated in 1606 with the Scrooby covenant. In our hands was the 1599 Geneva Bible.

Local historians tell us that only between 25,000 and 50,000 people in American history have ever set foot on this remote, inaccessible, privately-held island. (They also tell us that this island is next to a sandbar where, in the year 1004 A.D., the son of Leif the Red was buried after a battle.) The island’s inaccessibility is one reason why Pulpit Rock is not as famous as Plymouth Rock. But the message of Pulpit Rock is clear: before we can have political and social freedom (the message of Plymouth Rock), we must first have pure spiritual faith (Pulpit Rock).