Guy Fawkes and the KJV | Born-Again-Christian.Org

The Roman Catholic Gunpowder Plot

Q: What is the significance in Christian history of the 5th. November, and the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot?

A: “Bonfire Night” is highly significant for Christians worldwide. If the 1605 Jesuit plot had not been foiled; there would be no King James Version Holy Bible, a Catholic monarch would have ruled Great Britain, the Pilgrim Fathers would have been butchered as heretics, with the consequences that follow from that for the Commonwealth and the world.

The wide-reaching Roman Catholic terrorist plan was to; blow up Parliament, assassinate King James the First, stop the making of the King James Bible, and restore a Catholic Monarch.

The ongoing translation of the King James Version (AV, KJV, KJB) was almost aborted by a Catholic coup attempt, divinely uncovered at the last moment on November 5th. 1605.

Sitting on a Powder Keg

Through a tip-off from the King’s extensive spy-network, inherited from Queen Elizabeth, the plan was exposed. Guy Fawkes, the main perpetrator, was caught with kegs of gunpowder, and a smouldering wick, waiting to blow up the Houses of Parliament whilst King James attended the opening.

Nov. 5th: Bonfire Night

To celebrate, King James the First decreed the 5th. November, an annual day of thanksgiving for the God-sent deliverance.

Over 400 years later, November the 5th. is still a very popular annual celebration in the United Kingdom, a timely reminder of the overthrow of the Roman Catholic Gunpowder Plot.

Around Great Britain each community prepares huge public bonfires in parks and playing fields, to burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, and the Pope, in gratitude and remembrance of the event.

The crowds enjoy; firework displays, special home-made confectionary, toffee apples, and treacle toffee. Hot-baked-potatoes and mulled-cider keep their insides warm throughout the night of good-natured fun.

Penny for the Pope

Bonfire Night is especially popular with children, who are charged with making the Guy, or Pope, from old clothes stuffed with straw, complete with a large floppy, or pointed, hat on a head wearing a hideous mask. On the eve, the Guy is wheeled in a barrow from house to house, the kids collecting donations to buy fireworks. Their traditional solicitation is, “Penny for the Guy Mister?”, and their mnemonic rhyme;

Please to remember
The Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot;
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

With the proceeds they purchase colourful, noisy, fireworks bearing names such as; Penny Bangers, Wrip-Wraps, Spinning Catherine Wheels, Whiz-Bang Rockets, Volcanoes, and Roman Candles.

School and work continue normally because the event is confined to the chilly Autumnal evening.

The Catholic Plotters

There were over a dozen Catholic conspirators in the London based terrorist cell, the chief being; Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour (aka. Winter), John Wright, Guy Fawkes (aka. Guido Fawkes, and Guy Faukes), and Thomas Percy of the Northumberland Percys.

Each one was an English-born Catholic rebelling against the Church of England, and her Monarch, refusing to submit to the law, and determined to forcefully overthrow Protestantism in Great Britain and her colonies.

Guy Fawkes was a tall, 35 year-old, hot-headed recusant papist from Yorkshire. He’d spent time as a mercenary fighting, with Spanish Catholics against Dutch Protestants, in the continental “Eighty Years War”. There, he adopted the Spanish-Italian form of his name Guido.

Fawkes was so zealous, he secretly approached Catholic King Philip of Spain, as a delegate of the Jesuits, for assistance in toppling the British monarchy. King Philip wisely declined, having learned his lesson at the hands of Queen Elizabeth the First. She, by God’s grace, soundly defeated every Spanish attempt at invasion and subversion. Sir Francis Drake’s resounding naval victory, over the Spanish Armada in 1588, is second only in splendour to Lord Nelson’s stunning defeat of Napoleon’s invasion Fleet, at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st. October 1805.

<< 1583 Foxe’s Martyrs: Written, illustrated, and published by eyewitnesses. Read first-hand accounts of the black-doings of popery, and the enormous price paid by our Christian brothers and sisters, who defied Satan and stood for Christ.

Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November

Undeterred, Guy Fawkes collaborated with a dozen other well-to-do Catholic plotters, and rented a storage room beneath Parliament’s House of Lords, just as Members were about to convene.

Catesby, Wintour, and Fawkes filled the room with three dozen kegs of gunpowder, disguising them with firewood. It was whilst Fawkes was guarding, and preparing to detonate the cache, that he was caught by a Royal Patrol.

Taken to the King’s bed-chamber for questioning, Fawkes was rebellious and tight-lipped, so on the King’s direct order, he was removed to the Tower of London, and tortured to extract the names of his co-conspirators. Within days the whole cell of traitors was apprehended or killed fleeing.

Not for the Squeamish

Two months later, they were tried, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to public execution. According to British law at the time: They were to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

Gruesome justice indeed, designed to dissuade rebels from acts of treason.

In January 1606 opposite the Parliament they tried to destroy, the conspirators were hung by their limbs until stretched out of joint, their genitals were cut off and burned before their eyes, their bowels, and hearts, were removed, finally, their limbs were quartered, soaked in boiling tar, and displayed in public around the land.

Fawkes was the last waiting to be executed; in desperation to avoid the agony, he jumped off the public scaffold, and died of a broken neck before his body was mutilated.

Only Losers Fight The Word

The Lord thwarted the Roman Catholic coup attempt, and translation work on the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible continued unhindered. The new Bible had been ordered by King James the First, in January of 1604, at the famous Hampton Court meeting of Anglicans and Puritans. The Authorised Version was completed and published in 1611.

The result was not just another English translation of the Bible: They published the very words of God in English, and fulfilled their pledge to “good Christian readers”;

Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, … but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark.

Thanks be to Almighty God for His Eternal word in English.

Sufficient unto the day: What does it mean?

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