It is said that the Vikings discovered America 500 years before Columbus.
The question arises, why do they not get credit? I think it’s pretty simple, no one stayed and occupied the discovery. They did not move in and live and conquer the land. Many people discover the truth, but this truth never affects them because they don’t let that truth move in, conquer and multiply in them.
I have heard of famous people who were raised, visited, and were affected by being in and around the Apostolic preaching, worship, lifestyle, and doctrine. However, the lasting effect is not their identity because they did not let it transform them and continue that transformation until now.
I saw a conversation where a man. is looking over a land growing over with trees. He points out an old cabin and says, “This land was cleared by a man and his family over a long and hard journey to turn this land into farmland, however in just a few decades, the hardwood trees have reclaimed the farmland and turned it back into a hardwood forest.
When they reject that and walk away, a person with a great heritage of truth can and often do ensure that the revelation gained through deep hunger and careful study is lost completely in just one generation.
I have met countless people whose Grandparents were devout saints, but because their parents rebelled so strongly, they had no Bible knowledge and did not even own a Bible. There are millions of Jews today that are living examples of people who racially have a connection to Abraham, yet they are atheists and, in some cases, hostile to the idea of God and a God-conscious morality.
We see the Bible is a record of generation after generation of the Jews, delivered, prospered, and revived in their worship, only to lose it all again in just a generation or two. Josiah, his father, and his grandfathers were wicked men. His children and grandchildren became wicked men. Josiah was an anomaly in the generations of kings. For all the good he did, he could not change the nature of mankind to choose everything but righteousness and focused exclusionary worship of the one true God.
Individually, we must rediscover, reclaim and dig the wells of faith and dedication of previous generations again.
Maybe one of the greatest miracles of Abraham is found that Isaac and Jacob worshipped His God. That his faith went to the third and fourth generations. It still happens today. I am a living testimony of that. I am a fourth-generation apostolic. However, I have great uncles and aunts, uncles and aunts and even a brother, all who have the same heritage, lost it, or never gained it because they did not have a love for truth.
The Vikings, there is no lasting mark of their visit because their stay was temporary. Columbus, however, is celebrated because those who followed him moved in and stayed.