New Film Highlights Divine Providence in America’s Founding
The American Miracle: Our Nation Is No Accident is a powerful new docudrama exploring God’s providential hand in America’s founding, bringing forgotten history to life with compelling evidence, inspiring storytelling, and timely relevance.
Coming up on the 250th birthday of the United States, filmmaker Tim Mahoney and his team, creators of the “Patterns of Evidence” movie series exploring the events surrounding the biblical Exodus and early Israelite history, have produced a new docudrama, The American Miracle: Our Nation Is No Accident.
The movie is inspired by Michael Medved’s bestselling book titled The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic, presenting the forgotten story of God’s miraculous intervention. Medved serves as the principal narrator in the film.
We’re shown how the hand of God must have been involved in the lives of principal U.S. founders—particularly George Washington, who was remarkably preserved from death again and again—as well as in the highly improbable success of the Americans against the British.
Our staff having been given an early viewing, it can be reported that the film is well worth seeing. It entertainingly and movingly offers many interesting details not often taught in popular education.
The movie admits that America has often not done as it ought—a failure not of founding principles but in not living up to them. There is discussion of the evil of slavery, along with its ending in Massachusetts and what’s known as the 3/5 compromise in the U.S. Constitutional debate—which is not what many now think.
One of the historians interviewed disagrees on the role of divine providence—concluding simply that George Washington was a genius because he knew when not to fight, when to retreat. Yet even the retreats were at times miraculous!
Not meaning to spoil, but in seeing the record of miracles, I was intending to include in this review Benjamin Franklin’s amazing quote at an impasse at the Constitutional Convention about how all the delegates had seen evidence of divine intervention in answer to prayer throughout the Revolution, how he was convinced of the truth that God governs in the affairs of men, and that they needed to turn to God again in prayer. How delighted I was to see this speech from Franklin acted out word for word! That’s something you don’t see every day.
The movie, over 2 hours, has a post-credits scene that looks ahead to a sequel, Medved noting that the American miracle was not concluding but was just beginning.
The American Miracle: Our Nation Is No Accident will appear in theaters nationwide June 9-11 only. The trailer and more information are available at americanmiraclemovie.com.
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Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
