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“It’s a massive motor in a tiny, lightweight car.”
–Carroll Shelby
From time to time there are people who show up in the world to transform it and when they are here they always leave a mark that echoes forever through time.
With Christmas around the corner it goes without saying that the biggest of all of these people would be our one and only savior, Jesus. However, prior to Jesus physically coming to this world, and long after he left it, he worked through other individuals who managed to leave their mark on this place as well.
Having just turned 49 years of age this past November one thing I’ve learned in looking at life is that if you stand firm on something and do your best to do the right thing then God will honor your service…and if it comes down to it, he’ll honor your sacrifice.
This is not make believe or hyperbole, but this is an absolute statement of verifiable fact. We’ve seen this pattern emerge throughout many key moments in history that date all the way back through time to the days of Moses, to the American Revolution, and all the way up to modern day with the current Fourth Turning in history that we find ourselves living in the middle of right now.
If you pay attention you can spot these people when they arise and start working to leave their mark on society. However, what’s amazing is that even when such people pop up on the scene it’s incredible that so many other people are blind to them and their deeds even when the events of the world that they are impacting are staring them right in the face.
But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.”
–Mark 6:4
Jesus had this same problem with the Pharisees as they looked at him with jealous eyes and as a threat to their power structure rather than recognizing him as the brilliant and Holy Savior to all of mankind. Granted, nobody compares to the Lord.
However, even when people step up to grab the bull by the horns during challenging moments in society to speak truth, to stand firm on calling out the enemy, and even when they stand in the breach representing a true minority that goes against what all of society deems to be right, they most always get nothing but resistance from those they would expect to garner support from.
I’m in no way anywhere in the same category as Moses or the Lord, but even concerning my own small world I’ve still experienced this same phenomenon myself ever since I made the decision to start this Substack.
This sort of resistance, or lack of support, from people who are in close proximity to those folks that are doing what they can to change the world around them has been a consistent trait of human nature since the fall of mankind.
However, regardless of this reality there are still those people that manage to come on the scene and leave their mark on the world in a profound way. As a result, in these scenarios these Mavericks always impact the world in a way that results in significant change.
In addition to this, when it comes to the lives of these Mavericks there are acts of divine providence that always seem to occur at key moments during their lives as well.
In fact, when looking at the history of this pattern these acts of divine providence are well documented in critical scenarios throughout history and when observing the lives of four very well known American presidents the prevalence of these moments of divine providence really stands out.
From The Fog To The Fight, Fight, Fight
To kick off the first example of one of these key moments where divine providence shows up to impact the life of an American president we can go all the way back to the time of George Washington before he even became the president.
Washington actually had a few experiences where divine providence played out in numerous circumstances during his life, but for the sake of time and discussion I’m going to talk about one instance here that I’ve previously covered in an earlier episode titled Removing The Fog. I will include an excerpt from that article/podcast episode here.
It was August 22, 1776and General George Washington took a look around the battlefield amidst all the chaos realizing that his men had been soundly defeated and to make matters worse they were flanked out of their positions atop the Gowanus Heights (this would be part of today’s modern day Brooklyn).
After having been soundly defeated by William Howe’s 20,000 man force the smoke of the battlefield loomed over the ground just above all the death and destruction from a very tough day. General Washington’s heart was racing as he realized he was outnumbered and outgunned as he found himself confronted by the powerful British army to his front and he basically had his back up against the wall with the East River directly to his rear.
With the constant threat and concern that the Royal Navy would enter the East River and block his avenue of escape Washington had to make a courageous call as he ordered all the available flatboats to be brought down to his position. The goal here was to move his army over to Manhattan on the night of August 29-30, 1776.
Once again, Washington understood that if he and his men were seen by the Royal Navy that they would either be completely destroyed or captured. However, as they started making their way out across the river an incredible thing occurred that would be nothing short of a miracle.
As the men started to cross the river they were aided by a providential fog that completely hid their escape from the Royal Navy. Because of this miracle fog Washington was successfully able to move all 9000 of his troops to Manhattan without losing a single man. This would end up being a truly remarkable military feat that completely astounded his British enemy.
Here we can see where divine providence showed up in the nick of time for General Washington and because of this miracle Washington would go on to become the father of this nation.
Now as miraculous as that event was for paving the way to allow General Washington to become the founding father of this nation, he wasn’t the first president where divine providence showed up to change the course of history.
As amazing as that story was with General Washington, the miraculous actions of divine providence didn’t end with him. As we fast forward through time, another miracle with another president left its mark on history almost 60 years later.
It was a cold wet January day in Washington D.C. in 1835 and over by a pillar at the entrance to the Capitol Rotunda hid an unemployed house painter named Richard Lawrence.
As Richard sat hiding he was awaiting the arrival of a very important visitor which would include President Andrew Jackson who was on his way to attend a congressional funeral. As President Andrew Jackson approached Lawrence stepped forward and raised his derringer single-shot pistol and took careful aim at President Jackson’s heart.
At this moment he pulled the trigger and fired the gun. However, as the cap exploded and the noise and smoke filled the air from the shot, miraculously the powder failed to ignite. It was a Misfire!
At this stage of the game the president was in ill health and was forced to lean on a colleague and use a cane, but he still had a fighting spirit. At this moment President Jackson charged towards the assailant with his cane held high even as Lawrence pulled out a second pistol in order to take aim and he pulled the trigger a second time. Astonishingly, it was another Misfire! Here bystanders were able to get to the would-be-assassin and tackle him to the floor as the president was hustled away out of the area.
President Jackson was a warrior and was no stranger to physical or verbal violence. He was a soldier of distinction and suffered numerous battle wounds and had fought in at least a dozen personal duels. At the time, President Jackson had been engaged in fierce political combat with several of his congressional opponents.
The president’s opponents were so opposed to him that they decided to start a new political party at the time known as the Whigs in order to confront the enemy that they referred to as King Andrew.
During this era that we often refer to as “golden,” much of the Senate Chamber echoed some of the most vitriolic language towards the president frequently accusing Jackson of incompetence and corruption. However, given his own warrior spirit the president didn’t just sit back and take it as he would go on the offense retaliating with his own heated rhetoric.
The South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun had served as President Jackson’s first Vice President, but left the office in order to join up with the opposition. Reportedly, Calhoun had declared that Jackson was “a Caesar who ought to have a Brutus,” and among those who had listened to that speech was none other than Richard Lawrence himself.
Regardless of all of the rhetoric, divine providence managed not only to show up once for President Jackson, but it left its mark on history with the president’s assassin by showing up twice with the back to back misfiring of two separate guns within a matter of a few seconds.
Now when you read or hear about those acts of stochastic terrorism towards President Jackson how familiar does that political climate sound compared to today’s climate with President Trump? As the old saying goes, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
If this wasn’t spectacular enough, when examining these acts of divine providence throughout key moments in history involving American presidents our story still doesn’t end there. In other words, there would be another iconic president to be directly impacted by yet another miracle nearly 77 years later.
It was the year 1901 and President Theodore Roosevelt came along and in a 20,000-word State of the Union message to Congress he took aim to call on lawmakers to curb the power of trusts.
“Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions,” the president declared. Therefore, he added, it is “our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”
Now Theodore Roosevelt was successful at breaking up some very well known monopolies by leveraging the use of the Sherman Antitrust Act against the businesses of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company and J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Co., which was a railroad conglomerate.
Granted, it was obvious that this American President recognized the threat of centralized power to the nation from a similar concern shared at that time by our friend Louis Brandeis and his view involving the Curse of Bigness. On top of that it was a miracle that Roosevelt ended up in the office of the presidency in the first place.
You see, when Roosevelt first stepped foot in the White House he entered as President William McKinley’s Vice President. His ticket for the Vice Presidency was created to remove him from the political chessboard as a potential threat to run for the office of the president. Much of the establishment saw Roosevelt as a threat and knew he wouldn’t bend a knee to big business along with the fact that he was an independent thinker with some strong populist tendencies.
However, this plan to keep Roosevelt out of the office of the presidency backfired in a major way when President William McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901 and ended up dying eight days later on September 14, 1901.
Now it was a miracle that Roosevelt ended up becoming the president of the United States, despite the fact that there was an intentional effort to keep him out of office in the first place. However, divine providence would show up again many years later in the life of Teddy Roosevelt when he was actually out on the campaign trail giving a speech on October 14, 1912. It was at this time when a former saloonkeeper named John Schrank had been following Roosevelt for quite some time from Louisiana to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Out in front of the hotel is where Schrank pulled out a Model 1905 Colt Police Positive Pistol and shot Teddy in the chest. He made his move between the time Roosevelt was exiting the hotel and entering a car, but had briefly paused to acknowledge the cheers of an assembled crowd of onlookers.
Once again the miracle of divine providence showed up on this day as the bullet from the Colt hit Roosevelt in the chest, but not before having to go through his steel eye glass case and his 50 page speech which he happened to be carrying inside his jacket pocket. The items saved his life and immediately after he was shot he stumbled, but then straightened himself up and lifted his hat with a reassuring smile towards the crowd.
In a stunning display of strength and resilience Roosevelt gathered himself, stood tall, and yelled for the crowd that had taken down Schrank to not kill him. The crowd was just as shocked at the fact the former president wasn’t injured as they were surprised at his forgiving request to want to face his shooter.
Onlookers were asking if he was hurt, but once Roosevelt assured them that he was alright the crowd erupted in cheers. Now, after being shot Roosevelt pulled out his speech to show the crowd where the bullet hole had gone through the paper and lodged into his chest. However, he realized after coughing into his hands that there was no blood so he knew that the bullet had not penetrated his lungs.
At the time Roosevelt had started a third party known as the Bull Moose Party. After getting shot he was adamant about finishing the speech to the crowd and had famously told them that “It takes more than a bullet to kill a Bull Moose.”
Roosevelt would continue on to campaign for the office of the presidency, but he would end up losing the election of 1912 due to the fact that the vote total was split between himself and the Republican Party, therefore allowing the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win over the office of the presidency.
Now, even though Roosevelt didn’t win he was still a force of nature with his influence among the public in shaping the political and cultural landscape. After all, here I am writing and telling you about him 113 years after divine providence intervened so that his story could be told.
The reality is that Roosevelt’s fight wasn’t all that different from President Trump’s fight when looking at a more establishment Republican Party and the threat of centralized wealth and power with big business. In Roosevelt’s day, the centralization of wealth and power involved the railroads and the oil companies, whereas much of Trump’s problems have to do with the centralized power of the Administrative State and the necessity of antitrust lawsuits due to the power and size of big tech.
Speaking of President Trump, this brings us up to our fourth president where an act of divine providence took place once again on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania when a would-be assassin took aim and shot at President Trump as he delivered a speech at an open-air campaign rally.
Now, I’m sure I don’t have to dive into as much detail for this one. As the story goes, President Trump was able to narrowly avoid absorbing a direct hit to the head by a bullet. He managed to do this when he turned his head at the precise moment that was necessary for the bullet to miss its primary target while only slightly nicking his ear.
In the immediate aftermath of getting shot at, the Secret Service rushed the stage to cover President Trump. There was a period of time where the president’s condition was unknown, but then through the microphone onlookers could hear the president asking for his shoes as apparently they had come off when he hit the floor to get out of the assassin’s line of fire.
In watching the event unfold everyone could see when the president finally got to his feet because it was one of the most powerful moments that has occurred in United States history. Like President Roosevelt, President Trump stood tall surrounded by a mob of Secret Service agents at the very podium that he had just taken cover behind.
Once the president was able to get to his feet, as agents were trying to hold him back, he stood tall and lifted his fist high in the air and yelled Fight, Fight, Fight! The crowd erupted and his call to fight was intended to take direct aim at the Administrative State, the Administrative State Media (ASM), the intelligence community, the RINOs, and the cultural Marxists who all had been trying to destroy him, the MAGA movement, and the country at large.
In addition to having a bullet just graze his ear this was only the first attempt that was taken at President Trump’s life. There was also a second assassin by the name of Ryan Wesley Routh who would fortunately be stopped by the Secret Service before he could engage the president just a couple of months later when President Trump was golfing at West Palm Beach, Florida.
Anyone who has been paying attention can clearly see that divine providence didn’t just intervene with President Trump when the bullets were flying. The most corrupt system consisting of members of the intelligence community, radical judges, radical lawyers, and an outright corrupt Administrative State Media (ASM) had been waging a relentless lawfare campaign on the president and all of his supporters for several years.
Despite all the odds coming against President Trump and the MAGA movement, the president and the antifragile movement are still standing strong despite there having been some major casualties along the way such as Charlie Kirk.
The Wrap Up
So why did I go to the trouble to highlight these four presidents and what do all four of these men have in common?
To state the obvious, all four of these men had to overcome tremendous odds and often found themselves in a moment where they probably felt they were alone during some very dark days.
Now having said all of this, none of these men were perfect, then again nobody is except our Lord and Savior. However, all four of these men were Christians and all four of these men shared some traits that line up with the political viewpoint known as Populism.
That’s right, all four men were about taking the fight straight to the large centralized systems that had accumulated such significant size and power that they wanted to destroy the sovereignty of the individual citizen. Of course, in Washington’s case this involved the future citizen that would eventually be free from British tyranny as a result of his leadership, his actions, and the intervening miracle(s) of divine providence.
At the beginning of this episode I led off with that quote from Carrol Shelby that seems like it wouldn’t fit this topic of discussion because it talks about a massive motor fitting inside of a tiny, lightweight car.
Now for clarity, Shelby was referencing the design of his very powerful and iconic Shelby Cobra racing sports car. The point he was making was that the car’s chassis was lightweight while the driving force of the car involving the engine was quite the beast.
Given the clarity of that perspective this is essentially the same comparison we could make here with these four presidents functioning like a beast of an engine inside the lightweight systems of order that they fought against.
These men pushed those systems to their limits. They did this in order to drive that metaphorical machine as fast as possible in the direction that they wanted while having to overcome all sorts of instability and avoiding near complete disaster in the process. Just like a Shelby Cobra, the political machine is hard to handle, but once you build the momentum to drive it the machine will produce a lot of impressive outcomes for you during the race.
Nobody knew this better than these four men and these four men drove that machine as hard as it would go in order to achieve what they deemed to be necessary for the survival of the Republic. In fact, one of those four guys is still driving that machine has hard as possible right now. As a result of that current process, there’s a lot of instability and complaining going on with people who simply don’t understand how far previous decades of corrupt economic, geopolitical, and cultural dynamics have driven this country to the literal edge of destruction.
Despite all of that, we have made it to another Christmas season and I believe that season is here because the very source of that miracle season has been working alongside all of us to make sure that we made it here.
I’m also willing to bet that if you could ask these four gentlemen if they believe that’s the case that they would agree with that assessment.
Are there other key acts of divine providence that you’re familiar with that have occurred throughout history?
Have you personally experienced a miracle moment such as this yourself?
Please make sure you share your feedback in the comment section below.
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