A Christmas Message for 2025:
The Maryland 400 at the Battle of Brooklyn
He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my new name.
-Revelations 3:7,12
Restoring and Defending the Foundations of the New Jerusalem
By Joseph Healy, 2025
The people of God in Old Testament times came out of captivity and slavery in Babylon, came into the land of Israel, and rebuilt the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the nation of Israel. As is recorded in the book of Ezra and the book of Nehamiah:
Thus says Cyrus, King of Persia…Whoever there is among you of all His people, may his God be with him! Let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel. (Ezra 1:2)
[Nehemiah] said to them, “You see the bad situation we are in, that Jerusalem is desolate and its gates burned with fire. Come let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach.” (Nehemiah 2:17)
Those who were rebuilding the wall and those who carried burdens took their load with one hand doing the work and the other holding a weapon. (Nehemiah 4:17)
In the New Testament times, the people of God too have sought and do seek a country of their own, and a city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And I do not mean The City of God considered in only a spiritual sense, as in that mystical future prophetic age of the Kingdom, but a very real country and nation, in the here and now, built on the precepts of God and His Commandments—a New Jerusalem, a New Israel, as it were, in this present Gospel Age. And who is to say that this is not to be? Did not Christ Jesus Himself instruct His disciples to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”? And did he not command them to “Go…and teach all nations…to obey all that I have commanded you”?
This is precisely what our American Forebearers sought to do: to establish a Christian Commonwealth, a City set upon a hill, a civil society built upon the principles of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. They fled the Old World and came into this land they believed to be the land of their inheritance, the Promised Land. Through many generations they planted, they toiled, they cleared the forests, they tamed the land, they built towns, they endured hardships; and they cultivated and forged their social fabric and their national life. They also defended their young civilization from hostile native tribes, as well as from the attempts of the Old-World Powers “to exercise an unwarrantable jurisdiction over [them].”
We have in past years together considered and memorialized the great actions and sacrifices of our American forebearers in the Continental Army, especially at Christmastime. We remembered the Crucible of Freedom at Valley Forge in 1777, where their winter hardships were frankly unbearable, but they endured. We documented the Christmas night attack on Trenton, crossing the Delaware in a snowstorm; then they repelled the pursuing enemy at Asunnpink Creek and went on to take Princeton. But none of these triumphs would have materialized were it not for the Maryland 400 at the Battle of Brooklyn in the Summer of 1776.
The British landed the largest expeditionary force in history up to that time on Staten Island, from where they launched the attack on Long Island. Vastly outnumbering the portion of the Continental Army under Washington’s command, which inadvisedly attempted to engage them, the British forces surrounded them on three sides at the Battle of Brooklyn. As they were retreating, they were at serious risk of imminently being cut off and encircled. If Washington could be surrounded, they would be annihilated or forced to surrender, and the short-lived Revolution would be over. Then came an act of valor justly described as the American Thermopylae (where the small Spartan force defended Greece against the invading Persian mass at the narrow pass). The First Maryland Regiment attacked the British lines, hurling themselves against them time after time at a bottleneck by the Old Stone House. Sacrificing themselves almost to a man, they continued the assault, halting the enemy advance. This allowed precious time for the larger force of patriots led by Washington to withdraw to Brooklyn Heights. With their backs to the East River, Washington and his officers observed from the heights this heroic action.
Here is how Chris Formant, author of Saving Washington, describes the scene:
