Did You Know That The United States Once Had A ...

Did you know that the United States once had a king? Actually, he wasn’t a king—he was an emperor. During the gold-rush days of the 1800s in San Francisco, a man named Joshua A. Norton lost everything he had in market speculation. When that happened, something happened to his mind. He declared himself Norton I, Emperor of These United States. That sounds kind of funny, but he wasn’t kidding. As a matter of fact, in 1859, he published a proclamation that he was emperor according to an act of the California legislature. He dressed the part too. He carried a sword, wore a cape and dressed in a full emperor’s costume. It’s sad that his mental illness carried him to that extreme. But the really sad part is that people began to recognize him as emperor. They treated him like a star. They praised him wherever he went. The local police saluted him when he walked past. They even allowed him to collect a small tax and issue his own currency. When he died in 1880, more than 10,000 people attended his funeral. It was one of the largest California has ever had. Joshua A. Norton lived and died confused and wrong because people recognized him as emperor when he wasn’t. Over 2000 years ago, people recognized Jesus as King when He entered into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey colt. But unlike Joshua A. Norton, Jesus really was King. He was just a different kind of king than the people were expecting. He wasn’t confused and wrong like Joshua A. Norton—the people were. They were confused and wrong because they saw Jesus as an earthly king. They didn’t receive Him and recognize Him as their Lord and God.