Ezra Stiles, President of Yale predicts a Restoration

Many foresaw the great rise of the American Republic and its divinely chosen place in establishing Christianity.

Ezra Stiles, seventh President of Yale University, 1778-1795, predicted the following:

There are three coetaneous events to take place whose fruition is certain from prophecy, the annihilation of the Pontificate, the reassembling of the Jews, and the fulness of the Gentiles. That liberal and candid disquisition of Christianity, which will most assuredly take place in America, will prepare Europe for the first event, with which the other will be connected, when especially on the return of the twelve tribes to the Holy Land, there will burst forth a degree of evidence hitherto unperceived and of efficacy to convert a world. More than three quarters of mankind yet remain heathen.Heaven put a stop to the propagation of Christianity when the church became corrupted with the adoration of numerous deities and images, because this would have been only exchanging an old for a new idolatry. Nor is Christendom now larger than it was nine centuries ago. The promising prospects of the Propaganda fide at Rome are coming to nothing: and it may be of the divine destiny that all other attempts for gospelizing the nations of the earth shall fruitless, until the present Christendom itself be recovered to the primitive purity and simplicity. At which time, instead of the Babel confusion of contradicting missionaries, all will harmoniously concur in speaking one language, one holy faith,one apostolick religion to an unconverted world. At this period, and in effecting this great event, we have reason to think that the United States may be of no small influence and consideration.

It was of the Lord to send Joseph into Egypt, to save much people, and to shew forth his praise. It is of the Lord that "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet," and upon "her head a crown of twelve stars," (not to say thirteen) should "flee into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God" (Rev 12:1,6), and where she might be the repository of Wisdom, and "keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus." It may have been of the Lord that Christianity is to be found in such great purity in this church exiled into the wilderness of America; and that its purest body should be evidently advancing forward, by an augmented natural increase and spiritual edification, into a singular superiority--with the ultimate subserviency to the glory of God, in converting the world. ("The United States Elevated to Glory and Honour", Ezra Stiles, 1783.) fn

Although Ezra Stiles may not have foreseen the Restoration of the Gospel, he did see America as being the place where Christianity would be restored or recovered to its primitive form.  Only then could the world be truly converted, preparing the way for the return of the Jews and the tribes of Israel to their ancient homeland, and  for the fulness of the Gentiles to come in.




As quoted in: Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol I: to 1920, 4th Edition, ed. Thomas G. Paterson,  D.C. Heath and Company, Lexington, Mass: 1995, pg 40.