After four months of crossing the bitter Atlantic, three small English ships gratefully dropped anchor on April 26^th, 1607 at Cape Henry. On April 29^th, after 3 days of on-board prayer and fasting, Christopher Newport, Admiral of the fleet, and the Chaplain, Reverend Robert Hunt, went ashore with about 35 others. One of the first things they did was hold a worship service on the beach, dedicating the land of Virginia to the Lord Jesus Christ. Using a spare boat mast to build and erect a large cross on the bluff, the Reverend Hunt is said to have prayed that from this place the Gospel would go forth to the ends of the earth. The following is in all probability how the dedication went that day, based on what we know about Reverend Hunt, and the 1606 Virginia Charter.

During the dedication service, Reverend Hunt held out a Bible in his hand and laid the map of Virginia-America upon it. Hunt gave this country over to God, declaring that its foundation was on God's Word, the Bible, with Jesus Christ the Cornerstone. He also declared its dedicated purpose was to be a missionary base from which the Gospel would go forth for all time to come, and to support that effort, the country itself would be a Christian nation, with Biblical institutions, customs, language, law, educational systems, family structure, and government. *

This company envisioned a Christian community in Virginia that would become missionaries, first to the Native Americans (who may have arrived as many as 10,000 years earlier!) and to the peoples of every nation of the world. The subsequent settlement at Jamestown gave birth to that prayer, and we are here today to affirm this Biblical and historical mandate.

*M.J. Raeburn. America's Dedication to God Series: Booklet One: Richard Hakluyt's Contribution pp.3-4