Presbyterian Church Quotes

Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.

A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.

Jesus said his Father's House has many rooms. In this metaphor I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stocking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in.

Eisenhower, in contrast, turned spirituality into spectacle. At a transition meeting with his cabinet nominees, he announced that they and their families were invited to a special religious service at National Presbyterian Church the morning of the inauguration.

What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over half a century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio. Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia (the city where Barnhouse pastored), all of the bars would be closed, pornography banished, and pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The children would say "Yes, sir" and "No, ma'am," and the churches would be full every Sunday...where Christ was not preached.

Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to heir church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.

John Knox's dying words were, 'Lord, grant true pastors to Thy kirk.' Such was the last prayer of a great man without whom there would have been no America, no Puritans, no Pilgrims, no Scottish covenanters, no Presbyterians, no Patrick Henry, no Samuel Adams, no George Washington. Could it have been so simple? John Knox's agenda was far from political. All he wanted were more pastors and elders. This is our agenda. Lord grant true pastors to Thy church!

Balanced atop the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple, gleaming in the Utah sun, a statue of the angel Moroni stands watch over downtown Salt Lake City with his golden trumpet raised. This massive granite edifice is the spiritual and temporal nexus of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which presents itself as the world's only true religion. Temple Square is to Mormons what the Vatican is to Catholics, or the Kaaba in Mecca is to Muslims. At last count there were more than eleven million Saints the world over, and Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the Western Hemisphere. At present in the United States there are more Mormons than Presbyterians or Episcopalians. On the planet as a whole, there are now more Mormons than Jews. Mormonism is considered in some sober academic circles to be well on its way to becoming a major world religion--the first such faith to emerge since Islam.

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea.

The Reformed Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and Ireland are the only Churches within the British Dominions that take this position of political dissent

The author urges taking the pulse of the church outside our own neighborhood. More church attending Presbyterians in Ghana than Scotland, and while Western pastors beg to fill seats, some African pastors are asking people only to attend every second or third week to give room for others in packed churches.

Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality.

The light which we have gained, was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitering of a bishop, and the removing hum from the Presbyterian shoulders that will make us a happy nation; no, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zwinglius and Calvin have beaconed up to us, that we are stark blind.

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert’s. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don’t know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul’s Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert’s. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California—or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle.

There is either one Christ or there is none. If Jesus was not the eternal Son of God, equal in power and glory with the Father, then let's have done with all talk about Christianity. Let us admit honestly that we are Unitarians, Jews, Buddhists, or humanists. But not Christians. For the historical Jesus said, Upon this rock, of the deity of Christ, I will build my Church. Some other organization may call itself a church, but it is not his.

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church.

The phrase 'Founding Fathers' is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, but these fifty-five made up the core. Among the delegates were twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, one unknown, and only three deists- Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin. This took place at a time when church membership usually entailed "sworn adherence to strict doctrinal creeds." This tally proves that 51 of 55 -a full 93 percent- of the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political underpinnings of our nation were Christians, not deists.

Between 1906 and 1907, the Presbyterian churches grew from 54,987 members to 73,844. The Methodists grew from 18,107 in 1906 to 39,613 in 1907.24 Extending this range to a five-year period, Korean churches altogether added 80,000 converts, more than the total number of Christian converts during eighty years of missionary activity in neighboring China.

If obedience is the chief thing good stood upon, why are not other laws and statutes urged as strictly as those which concern ceremonies?

In fact, there are all sorts of great institutions and human enterprises that the Bible doesn’t address or regulate. And so we are free to invent them and operate them in line with the general principles for human life that the Bible gives us. But marriage is different. As the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship says, God “established marriage for the welfare and happiness of humankind.” Marriage did not evolve in the late Bronze Age as a way to determine property rights. At the climax of the Genesis account of creation we see God bringing a woman and a man together to unite them in marriage. The Bible begins with a wedding (of Adam and Eve) and ends in the book of Revelation with a wedding (of Christ and the church). Marriage is God’s idea.

Who Started Your Church? • Calvary Chapel, 1965: Chuck Smith • Mormon church, 1830: Joseph Smith • Disciples of Christ, 1809: Thomas Campbell • Baptist church, 1609: John Smyth • Presbyterian church, 1560: John Knox • Calvinist church, 1536: John Calvin • Lutheran church, 1517: Martin Luther • Eastern Orthodox church, 1054: Eastern Patriarchs • Catholic Church, 33: Jesus Christ

She has inspected the ancient church: not a lot to see there. The stained-glass windows must have gone when the Presbyterians took over. Dead soldiers' names on the wall, as if God were interested.

This was the danger of sharing your dreams with your parents. If you told them you wanted to learn to play the guitar, all they heard you say was, “I want to learn to play the guitar,” and then they found some practical, convenient, cheap way, often involving a church basement, for you to do it. But Hector had not come up with any plan of his own. And owning a guitar seemed like an important stepping stone on the way to being a guitar player. So he pawned his soul and said he would take the lessons from the Presbyterian youth minister. What the hell, he thought. Or heck, he thought. What the heck.

Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians

It is a curious thing that in whaling vessels the Church of England Prayer book is always employed, though there is never a member of that Church among officers or crew. Our men are all Roman Catholics or Presbyterians, the former predominating. Since a ritual is used which is foreign to both, neither can complain that the other is preferred to them, and they listen with all attention and devotion, so that the system has something to recommend it.

Some very hungry people gathered to discuss how to distribute a small amount of food. It was understood that each church was supposed to take care of its own. The local Episcopal rector said, "My church, follow me." The Presbyterian minister said, "Mine, follow me." And the other denominations did the same. There were a lot of folks left. Then, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, stepped forward and said: "All of you who belong to nobody, you follow me.

To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.

Reid was born in 1818 in Ballyroney, County Down, the son of Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid Sr., who was a senior clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. His father wanted him to become a Presbyterian minister, so in September 1834 he enrolled at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. Although he stayed for four years, he could not motivate himself enough to complete his studies and receive a degree. In December 1839 he boarded the Dumfriesshire bound for New Orleans, Louisiana, arriving in January 1840. Shortly afterward he found work as a clerk for a corn factor

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous. ... Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen to an ignoramus try to prove that he is a better theologian than the Pope. This folly the Romans now slide into. Their clergy begin to grow argumentative, doctrinaire, ridiculous. It is a pity. A bishop in his robes, playing his part in the solemn ceremonial of the mass, is a dignified spectacle; the same bishop, bawling against Darwin half an hour later, is seen to be simply an elderly Irishman with a bald head, the son of a respectable police sergeant in South Bend, Ind. Let the reverend fathers go back to Bach. If they keep on spoiling poetry and spouting ideas, the day will come when some extra-bombastic deacon will astound humanity and insult God by proposing to translate the liturgy into American, that all the faithful may be convinced by it.

It was customary for the town’s three churches—Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian—to unite and listen to one visiting minister, but occasionally when the churches could not agree on a preacher or his salary, each congregation held its own revival with an open invitation to all; sometimes, therefore, the populace was assured of three weeks’ spiritual reawakening. Revival time was a time of war:

On the other hand, the religious heritage of some Protestants is “economic trinitarianism,” by which they mean a belief in one God who has revealed Himself in three different manifestations as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They reject the claim that the Christian God is a trinity of three distinct “persons.” Today many Presbyterians and other Christians among various Protestant churches have this view of God.

I guess I'm like Grandfather Street was in his religion. He thought the Baptists were wonderful until he joined them and then the Presbyterians looked more interesting to him. After he'd been with them a while he couldn't see how anybody could be a Presbyterian, so he joined the Unitarians. People thought he was a turncoat, but he wasn't - he was just a sort of religious Mormon. One church wasn't enough for him.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. —Psalm 85:10 (KJV) When my husband, David, made the heart-wrenching decision to leave his post as senior minister at Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, the church was strong, thriving, and ripe for new leadership. But leaving was complicated. No one has ever loved a congregation more than David, and the congregation responded in kind. So it was infinitely sad when an influential person began working to erase David’s legacy. We had looked forward to returning to Hillsboro after the proper transition period, but now amid the confusion, the outlook was cloudy. Would it work for David to come back? Would we lose our church family forever? Finally, a new minister was chosen. For me, I wasn’t sure how I would feel until I met Chris. My reaction was immediate. I have a pastor! But what about David? I would never go back to Hillsboro without him. Well, it seems God had planned ahead. Chris sent out a letter to the congregation, addressing the misperception that “it’s not possible to love the new pastor if you still love the previous pastor.” He dispelled that notion with five simple words: “It’s okay to love both.” Chris went on to describe his meetings with David and to announce that he had invited him to come back to Hillsboro where the two of them “share a love for the church and its people.” And so it was finished. We had a church home once again, where we could come and worship with our family and friends, a place where there’s enough love for everyone, and a new minister wise enough to know that’s true. Father, I pray for the day when all of us grasp the unlimited reservoir of Your love and can finally see its regenerating power. —Pam Kidd Digging Deeper: Ps 132:7; Eph 4:15–16; Col 3:14–17

Beyond the family or particular Christian tradition, how much effort do we make to consider what the Mennonites or the Episcopalians, the Baptists or the Pentecostals, the Methodists or the Presbyterians have to say to the rest of us out of their DIFFERENCES, as well as out of the affirmation in common with other Christians? As I suggested earlier, our patterns of ecumenicity tend to bracket out our differences rather than to celebrate and capitalize upon them. Finding common ground has been the necessary first step in ecumenical relations and activity. But the next step is to acknowledge and enjoy what God has done elsewhere in the Body of Christ. And if at the congregational level we are willing to say, 'I can't do everything myself, for I am an ear: I must consult with a hand or an eye on this matter,' I suggest that we do the same among whole traditions. If we do not regularly and programmatically consult with each other, we are tacitly claiming that we have no need of each other, and that all the truth, beauty, and goodness we need has been vouchsafed to us by God already. Not only is such an attitude problematic in terms of our flourishing, as I have asserted, but in this context now we must recognize how useless a picture this presents to the rest of society. Baptists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics failing to celebrate diversity provide no positive examples to societies trying to understand how to celebrate diversity on larger scales.

5. The reading of the Scriptures with godly fear, the sound preaching, and conscionable hearing of the Word, in obedience unto God, with understanding, faith, and reverence; singing of psalms with grace in heart; as also the due administration and worthy receiving of the sacraments instituted by Christ, are all parts of the ordinary religious worship of God: besides religious oaths, vows solemn fastings, and thanksgivings upon special occasions, which are, in their several times and seasons, to be used in a holy and religious manner. Another element of true worship is the "signing of psalms with grace in the heart." It will be observed that the Confession does not acknowledge the legitimacy of the use of modern hymns in the worship of God, but rather only the psalms of the Old Testament. It is not generally realized today that Presbyterian (and many other Reformed) churches originally used only the inspired psalms, hymns and songs of the biblical Psalter in divine worship, but such is the case. The Westminster Assembly not only expressed the conviction that the psalms should be sung in divine worship, but implemented it by preparing a metrical version of the Psalter for use in the churches. This is not the place to attempt a consideration of this question. But we must record our conviction that the Confession is correct at this point. It is correct, we believe, because it has never been proved that God has commanded his Church to sing the uninspired compositions of men rather than or along with the inspired songs, hymns, and psalms of the Psalter in divine worship.

In any community, there is a tension between a task-oriented culture and a relational (or covenantal) culture. Both are integral to a healthy community. Tasks need the organizational structures of committees, agendas, and regulated, efficient actions. And actions, committees, and structures need to be grounded in, and responsive to, dynamic covenant relationships that are always in process. Most communities, however, have an overwhelming tendency to focus on tasks and structures, and the churches I have served are no exception to this rule. The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, for example, is awash in tasks, such as serving the homeless and the mentally ill, tutoring inner-city teenagers, and tending to our members. We expend an enormous amount of energy engaging these tasks. In fact, tasks consume most of our time and energy. Thus, relationship building is not easy because it is most often done in and around our activities (our tasks). All of this is to say that relation building, if it is to be foundational to communal life, must be intentional and focused, for tasks can be all-consuming.

The temptation for a new generation, however, could be to see Baptist identity as a nuisance in the quest for converts. The effort to minimize an offensive "denominational brand name" will be counterproductive if we produce a generation of "anonymous Baptists," those whom we believe cannot handle the truth about Christ's design for His church. It will be tragic indeed if a future Broadman and Holman catalog includes a book titled, "Why I Am a Community Church (SBC) member." But it will be equally tragic if the volume is titled, "Why I Want to Be a Presbyterian, but the Bible Won't Let Me.

Religion and Higher Learning.—Religious motives entered into the establishment of colleges as well as local schools. Harvard, founded in 1636, and Yale, opened in 1718, were intended primarily to train "learned and godly ministers" for the Puritan churches of New England. To the far North, Dartmouth, chartered in 1769, was designed first as a mission to the Indians and then as a college for the sons of New England farmers preparing to preach, teach, or practice law. The College of New Jersey, organized in 1746 and removed to Princeton eleven years later, was sustained by the Presbyterians.

According to Tim Keller, nearly all Presbyterian Church in America presbyters subscribe to The Westminster Confession of Faith ‘with only the most minor exceptions (the only common one being with regard to the Sabbath).’ If, however, such an exception amounts to a wholesale rejection of the confessions’s approach to the Sabbath, its authors might have judged Keller a master of understatement. Were the Westminster Confession a garment, you would not want to pull this ‘minor’ thread, unless you wanted to be altogether defrocked. And perhaps the reason that some people pull at this thread is because they regard the confession as more of a straightjacket than a garment. Unbuckle the Sabbath, and you are well on your way to mastering theological escapology. If this seems overstatement to rival Keller’s understatement, let me say that biblical law, with its Sabbath, is no easily dispensable part of the Reformed doctrinal infrastructure. And what applies to the theology of the Reformed churches often applies to wider Protestant theology. Attempts at performing a precision strike on the Sabbath produce an embarrassing amount of unintended damage. Strike out the Sabbath and you also shatter the entire category of moral law and all that depends on it.

The most glorious triumphs of the Church have been won in times of persecution. The early church was persecuted for about three hundred years after the crucifixion, and they were years of growth and progress. But then, as Saint Augustine has said, the cross passed from the scene of public executions to the diadem of the Caesars, and the down-grade movement began. When the Church has joined hands with the State, it has invariably retrograded in spirituality and effectiveness; but the opposition of the State has only served to purify it of all dross. It was persecution that gave Scotland to Presbyterianism. It was persecution that gave this country to civil and religious freedom.

As a commissioner (delegate) to the Old School Presbyterian General Assembly in 1845, Thornwell wrote to his wife, “I have no doubts but that the Assembly, by a very large majority, will declare slavery not to be sinful, will assert that it is sanctioned by the word of God, that it is purely a civil relation with which the Church, as such, has no right to interfere, and that abolitionism is essentially wicked, disorganizing, and ruinous.”7 In an 1850 sermon Thornwell painted a clear picture that Christians supported slavery and atheists opposed it: “The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground—Christianity and atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity the stake.”8

Endorsement of the ordination of women is not the final step in the process, however. If we look at the denominations that approved women’s ordination from 1956–1976, we find that several of them, such as the United Methodist Church and the United Presbyterian Church (now called the Presbyterian Church–USA), have large contingents pressing for (a) the endorsement of homosexual conduct as morally valid and (b) the approval of homosexual ordination. In fact, the Episcopal Church on August 5, 2003, approved the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop.16 In more liberal denominations such as these, a predictable sequence has been seen (though so far only the Episcopal Church has followed the sequence to point 7): 1. abandoning biblical inerrancy 2. endorsing the ordination of women 3. abandoning the Bible’s teaching on male headship in marriage 4. excluding clergy who are opposed to women’s ordination 5. approving homosexual conduct as morally valid in some cases 6. approving homosexual ordination 7. ordaining homosexuals to high leadership positions in the denomination17 I am not arguing that all egalitarians are liberals. Some denominations have approved women’s ordination for other reasons, such as a long historical tradition and a strong emphasis on gifting by the Holy Spirit as the primary requirement for ministry (as in the Assemblies of God), or because of the dominant influence of an egalitarian leader and a high priority on relating effectively to the culture (as in the Willow Creek Association). But it is unquestionable that theological liberalism leads to the endorsement of women’s ordination. While not all egalitarians are liberals, all liberals are egalitarians. There is no theologically liberal denomination or seminary in the United States today that opposes women’s ordination. Liberalism and the approval of women’s ordination go hand in hand.

Dog days in Maycomb meant at least one revival, and one was in progress that week. It was customary for the town’s three churches—Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian—to unite and listen to one visiting minister, but occasionally when the churches could not agree on a preacher or his salary, each congregation held its own revival with an open invitation to all; sometimes, therefore, the populace was assured of three weeks’ spiritual reawakening. Revival time was a time of war: war on sin, Coca-Cola, picture shows, hunting on Sunday; war on the increasing tendency of young women to paint themselves and smoke in public; war on drinking whiskey—in this connection at least fifty children per summer went to the altar and swore they would not drink, smoke, or curse until they were twenty-one; war on something so nebulous Jean Louise never could figure out what it was, except there was nothing to swear concerning it; and war among the town’s ladies over who could set the best table for the evangelist.

Church Fathers on the End Times The Church Fathers taught pre-millennialism in the first three centuries. Here are the pre-millennial teachings from the Fathers in their order:   1.        The Roman Empire would split in two. (This took place in AD 395.) 2.        The Roman Empire would fall apart. (This took place in AD 476.) 3.        Out of what was the Roman Empire, ten nations would spring up. These are the ten toes/horns of Daniel’s prophecies. 4.        A literal demon-possessed man, called the Antichrist, will ascend to power. 5.        The Antichrist’s name, if spelled out in Greek, will add up to 666. 6.        The Antichrist will sign a peace treaty between the Jews in Israel and the local non-believers there. This treaty will last seven years. 7.        This seven-year treaty is the last seven years of the “sets of sevens” prophecy in Daniel 9. 8.        At the end of the seven years, Jesus will return to earth, destroy the Antichrist, and establish reign of peace that will last for a literal 1000 years. 9.        They wrote they were taught these things by the apostles. They also wrote that anyone who rises up in the church and begins to say any of these things are symbolic, are immature Christians that can’t rightly divide the word of God, and should not be listened too. (Today these beliefs are included in the doctrines of most of, but not all of, the Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches!)   Here are some of the references from the early church fathers on the End Times:   “After the resurrection of the dead, Jesus will personally reign for 1000 years. He was taught this by the apostle John himself.” Papias Fragment 6   “The man of Sin, spoken of by Daniel, will rule two (three) times and a half, before the Second Advent… There will be a literal 1000 year reign of Christ… The man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us, the believers.” Justin Martyr Dialogue 32,81,110

I Never Knew What They Meant by Flyover Country until the first time someone put me on a plane, windowed me into the congregation looking down on our fields stretched out endless in orderly blanks, redactions in the transcripts of the trial of man versus nature. All this holy squinting at scrimshaw country roads draped with power lines - trip wires lying in wait for the giants we just sort of mice around. I watched the others look down on our Fridays racing Opal Road to hit the tiny hill that drops stomachs like a roller coaster, headlights off for cops. Eighty; Ninety. Ninety-five in a fifty-five, how Kyle's brother talked about defusing IEDs on tour - snip whichever wire you want, you'll only find out if you're a hero. We learned a word for this, its reckless in court, predestination in church. Funny how a thing gets a different name there. Robe becomes vestment. Bench becomes pew. Truth grows a capital letter. Anything to help believe, Mom says, though when it comes to theology we are Presbyterian in casseroles only. This is the word of God, says the pastor into the microphone. See you at the picnic after. See you at the finish, says Kyle's Honda Civic. See you never says his brother's IED.

The “Larger Westminster Catechism” (1688)—adopted by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church—declares, “God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of His mere love, for the praise of His glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, hath elected some angels to glory, and in Christ hath chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof; and also, according to His own will (whereby He extendeth or withholdeth favor as He pleases), hath passed by, and foredained the rest to dishonour and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of His justice.

Indeed, having pastored a traditional Presbyterian congregation for almost 18 years, I can attest that young people coming to us from other denominational traditions with worship practices that were shaped explicitly with the aim of attracting young people, when asked why they have come to our church, they almost invariably say “the preaching (expositional, theological, Gospel proclamation) and the approach to public worship (simple, substantial, reverent, historic, biblical).

While we must continue to align ourselves in denominations that share our theological distinctives, at the local level our bias should be in the direction of cooperation with other congregations. Because of this belief, Redeemer Presbyterian Church has for a number of years given money and resources to churches of other denominations that are planting churches. We have helped to start Pentecostal churches, Baptist churches, and Anglican churches, as well as Presbyterian churches. For our efforts we have received sharp criticism and a lot of amazed stares. We believe this is one clear way to practice the kind of catholicity that turns a city of balkanized Christian churches and denominations into a movement.

Doak and other early abolitionists planted a host of Presbyterian churches and “log cabin colleges” that taught a strong antislavery doctrine. They laid the basis for eastern Tennessee to become the first true locus of the abolition movement in America.

As the Protestant denominations—Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and others—were carried into the slave states of the South, into the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, their churches, pastors, and congregants were dipped in the culture and economy of the South, and increasingly found it necessary to defend and justify the practice of human bondage.

Twelve white men. Four Baptists; two Methodists; two Pentecostals; one Presbyterian; one Church of Christ. And two who claimed no church membership and were likely headed straight to hell.

prospective buyer who knocked on their door in January and found her in a chenille robe, a World War II trench coat, a pair of rubber garden boots, a man’s felt hat, and what appeared to be Uncle Billy’s flannel pajama bottoms. As far as the frozen caller could tell, there was no heat in the house. Being a caring soul, he inquired around and was told that the Presbyterian church had filled up Miss Rose’s oil tank in November, and, on last inspection, it was still full. Most people knew, too, that the old couple walked to Winnie Ivey’s bake shop every afternoon, always hand in hand, to pick up what was left over. Winnie, however, was not one to give away the store. She carefully portioned out what she thought they would eat that night and the next morning, and no more. She didn’t like the idea of Miss Rose feeding her perfectly good day-old Danish to the birds. After their visit to the bake shop, Miss Rose and Uncle Billy, walking very slowly due to arthritis and a half dozen other ailments, dropped by to see what Velma had left at the Main Street Grill. Usually, it was a few slices of bacon and liver mush from breakfast, or a container of soup and a couple of hamburger rolls from lunch. Occasionally, she might add a little chicken salad that Percy had made, himself, that very morning. On balance, it was said, Miss Rose and Uncle Billy fared

Bagshaw owned a half share in the harness business and a quarter share in the tannery and that made him a business man. He paid for a pew in the Presbyterian Church and that represented religion in Parliament. He attended college for two sessions thirty years ago, and that represented education and kept him abreast with modern science, if not ahead of it. He kept a little account in one bank and a big account in the other, so that he was a rich man or a poor man at the same time.

That’s why I liked the Presbyterian church; we believed in doing things decently and in order. When you went to church, you knew exactly what you were going to get. We didn’t want to be surprised or entertained. And, Lord knows, we didn’t want anything changed.

Indeed, most mainline churches in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition today either ignore or reject their Calvinistic distinctives.

Whiskers says that he will believe the stories of German atrocities when he sees them, and that it is a good thing that Rangs Cathedral has been destroyed because it was a Roman Catholic church. Now, I am not a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Dr. dear, being born and bred a good Presbyterian and meaning to live and die one, but I maintain that the Catholics have as good a right to their churches as we have to ours and that the Huns had no kind of business to destroy them.

Our revolution of '76, and onward, was not a rebellion; it was resistance of oppression, of burdensome taxation without equal representation, and it resulted in our distinct nationality.

But all these revolutions resulted in good to the people. Education, public spirit, enterprise, labor, all the arts of civilization, and even evangelical Christianity received a new impulse. Mind was opened and enlarged; the people thought for themselves, and sighed for knowledge and a better faith.

and raised armies to exterminate, if possible, our nationality. And

could never doubt that our fathers did a noble, glorious, and Christian deed in throwing off the yoke of Britain, and proclaiming a new government for themselves and their posterity. It

In recent decades, the biggest enemies of shamanism have been Korea’s many fervent Christians. Which, said Mason, is highly ironic, since Korean Christianity is rather shamanistic. If you’ve ever been to some of these churches in Korea, you know exactly what he’s talking about. Even at some churches of “mainstream” denominations, like Presbyterianism, people can be seen going into a trance and speaking in tongues. An

The church, which squatted among the headstones like a wet mother dodo, had been at various times Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, and Universally Apocalyptic. It was now the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

It was model-picking day at the Presbyterian Church hall.

Charles I. knew that Presbyterianism is the friend of civil freedom, and that Prelacy in the Church will more readily consent to despotism in the State. The "Black Acts" were passed confirming the "king's royal power over all states and subjects within this realm,

Finally, the Reformers also agreed that worship should be in the vernacular and that the twofold structure of Word and sacrament be maintained. Zwingli was the only Reformer who disagreed with the desire to return to the ancient structure of Word and sacrament. His emphasis was on the Word only. Zwingli’s position remained the most influential in the circles of Calvinism, and, to the distress of John Calvin, quarterly communion, rather than weekly communion, became standard in the churches most influenced by Calvinism. This influence extended through the English Puritans to the Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and independents and spread through them to most of American Protestant Christianity.

If revival should ever occur, it will revolve around the energetic resolve of doctrinally accurate church members, ministers and theologians of our day bound together in the truth.  Revival has often happened when the country or state is under their greatest duress of sin and blindness.  However, no matter how far a country or state may sink into sin, or despise the Gospel, revival will never occur at the expense of the truth.  Wickliffe was in his Roman Catholic Oxford, Huss in his dark Bohemia, and Luther was in his religiously superstitious Germany.  Calvin and Zwingli were Roman Catholic priests turned Christian in a politically tender Switzerland, and the Scottish Presbyterians were facing the onslaught of a Roman Catholic persecution.  This is how God brings revival – in deep darkness and distress, but never at the expense of the truth.  For, as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said, only the truth shall set you free.

In a western world whose priorities are increasingly secular, many find it hard to understand the religious intolerance of the seventeenth century, but it is important to try to do so. For both Presbyterians and Anglicans not only was religious truth indivisible but a coercive Church seemed essential to impose Christian standards of conduct on an inherently sinful population. For many Anglicans, moreover, the Church of England was much more than just one Church among many: it claimed a continuous visible existence to match that of the Roman Church and so had an equal right to call itself a true Church.

They chose instead the foreign school run by Presbyterians at Pyengyang (now Pyongyang) in northern Korea. The Bells all went down to Shanghai, and Nelson took Rosa via Japan in September 1932, returning by train through Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Pyengyang was then one of the world's most Christian cities. The tragedy of North Korea lay fourteen years in the future. No one knew in 1932 that the Red Army would pour across the frontier a few days before the Japanese surrender of 1945 to create a Communist state of North Korea, which ruthlessly exterminated, exiled, or drove underground the faithful Korean church and made Pyengyang the atheist capital.

D. G. Hart, in his book Recovering Mother Kirk, rightly urges Presbyterians ‘to abandon the notion of the church as personal trainer’ and to recover ‘Calvin’s idea of the church as mother.’ 9

No Church has done more to fill the world with gloom than the Presbyterian. Its creed is frightful, hideous, and hellish. The Presbyterian God is the monster of monsters. He is an eternal executioner, jailer and turnkey. He will enjoy forever the shrieks of the lost — the wails of the damned. Hell is the festival of the Presbyterian God.

For more than two centuries, black people had resisted Christianity, often with the tacit acquiescence of their owners. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christian missionaries who attempted to bring slaves into the fold confronted a hostile planter class, whose only interest in the slaves' spirituality was to denigrate it as idolatry. Westward-moving planters showed little sympathy with slaves who prayed when they might be working and even less patience with separate gatherings of converts, which they suspected to be revolutionary cabals. An 1822 Mississippi law barring black people from meeting without white supervision spoke directly to the planters' fears. But the trauma of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton revolution sensitized transplanted slaves to the evangelicals' message. Young men and women forcibly displaced from their old homes were eager to find alternative sources of authority and comfort. Responding to the evangelical message, they found new meaning in the emotional deliverance of conversion and the baptismal rituals of the church. In turning their lives over to Christ, the deportees took control of their own destiny. White missionaries, some of them still committed to the evangelical egalitarianism of the eighteenth-century revivals, welcomed black believers into their churches. Slaves - sometimes carrying letters of separation from their home congregations - were present in the first evangelical services in Mississippi and Alabama. The earliest religious associations listed black churches, and black preachers - free and slave - won fame for the exercise of 'their gift.' Established denominational lines informed much of slaves' Christianity. The large Protestant denominations - Baptist and Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian - made the most substantial claims, although Catholicism had a powerful impact all along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana and Florida. From this melange, slaves selectively appropriated those ideas that best fit their own sacred universe and secular world. With little standing in the church of the master, these men and women fostered a new faith. For that reason, it was not the church of the master or even the church of the missionary that attracted black converts; they much preferred their own religious conclaves. These fugitive meetings were often held deep in the woods in brush tents called 'arbors.' Kept private by overturning a pot to muffle the sound of their prayers, these meetings promised African-American spirituality and mixed black and white religious forms into a theological amalgam that white clerics found unrecognizable - what one planter-preacher called 'a jumble of Protestantism, Romanism, and Fetishism.' Under the brush arbor, notions of secular and sacred life took on new meanings. The experience of spiritual rebirth and the conviction that Christ spoke directly to them armed slaves against their owners, assuring them that they too were God's children, perhaps even his chosen people. It infused daily life with the promise of the Great Jubilee and eternal life that offered a final escape from earthly captivity. In the end, it would be they - not their owners - who would stand at God's side and enjoy the blessing of eternal salvation.

Aunt Becky was born a Presbyterian, lived a Presbyterian, and died a Presbyterian. She had a hard man to please in Theodore Dark, but she made him quite as good a wife as he deserved. She was a good neighbour as neighbours go and did not quarrel more than anybody else in the clan. She had a knack of taking the wind out of people's sails that did not make for popularity. She seldom suffered in silence. Her temper was about the average, neither worse nor better and did not sweeten as she grew older. She always behaved herself decently, although many a time it would have been a relief to be indecent. She told the truth almost always, thereby doing a great deal of good and some harm, but she could tell a lie without straining her conscience when people asked questions they had no business to ask. She occasionally used a naughty word under great stress and she could listen to a risky story without turning white around the gills, but obscenity never took the place of wit with her. She paid her debts, went to church regularly, thought gossip was very interesting, liked to be the first to hear a piece of news, and was always especially interested in things that were none of her business. She could see a baby without wanting to eat it, but she was always a very good mother to her own. She longed for freedom, as all women do, but had sense enough to understand that real freedom is impossible in this kind of a world, the lucky people being those who can choose their masters, so she never made the mistake of kicking uselessly over the traces. Sometimes she was mean, treacherous and greedy. Sometimes she was generous, faithful, and unselfish. In short, she was an average person who had lived as long as anybody should live.

The Baptists argued that the Church of God should be a community of godly men; that faith is the gift of God, and not to be compelled by force of arms; that only those rites sanctioned or commanded by Christ and His Apostles are binding upon His people; and that the only Lawgiver of the Church is Christ Himself. Each party [Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians] had, therefore, its own reason for hating the Baptists; and as each had yet to learn the true nature of religious freedom, each oppressed and persecuted in turn.”9 Baptists protested that they were not Anabaptists, because they did not see baptizing believers who had been sprinkled as infants as re-baptizing and because they did not want the radical, anti-state label hung on them as earned by some Anabaptist and 5th Monarchy activists. It appears that after some time of such protests, in answer to the inevitable question, “If you're not Anabaptists, what are you?” 10 the name “Baptist” emerged.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer, minister of New Orleans’s First Presbyterian Church and a prominent theologian, put the matter squarely in a major sermon two decades later. “This system is interwoven with our entire social fabric,” he emphasized. “It has fashioned our modes of life, and determined all our habits of thought and feeling, and moulded the very type of our civilization.”71

He railed at ecclesiastical bureaucracy, particularly the theological hairsplitting and heresy-hunting that had come to characterize Presbyterian conclaves: “These things in the Presbyterian church, their contentions and janglings are so ridiculous, so wicked, so outrageous, that no doubt there is a jubilee in hell every year, about the time of the meeting of the General Assembly.”8

the Southern Baptist convention sponsors “about 5,000 home missionaries” and “more than 5,000 foreign missionaries.”44 For a denomination of sixteen million, this comes to approximately “0.000625 missionaries per capita.” By contrast, the 310,000 member Presbyterian church in America (which believes the Bible teaches predestination) has “about 600 foreign missionaries.” That is 0.001935 foreign missionaries per capita commissioned

Finding shared ground with fellow Christians is a valuable enterprise. Restoration scriptures teach repeatedly of a universal Church comprising all those who “come unto Christ,” including “holy men” and women Joseph “[knew] not of,” a community culled from all ages and cultures.2 Those same scriptures admonish us to seek after the truth in “all good books, . . . languages, tongues, and people,” as well as in scriptural records not belonging to the standard works, such as the Apocrypha.3 The Restoration scriptures encourage us as individuals and as a Church community to seek after good everywhere and make it a part of our religion. “The grand fundamental principle of Mormonism is to receive truth let it come from where it may.”4 As the Prophet Joseph Smith stated: If the Methodists, Presbyterians, or others have any truth, then we should embrace it. One must “get all the good in the world” if one wants to “come out a pure Mormon.”5

There is nothing inherent in the Reformed faith, such as its doctrines of human depravity or original sin, or distinctive about Presbyterian approaches to biblical interpretation, to explain the capitulation of white Presbyterians to American slavery.

Moshe had few friends. Most of Pottstown’s Jews had left Chicken Hill by then. Nate was a friend, but he was a Negro, so there was that space between them. But with Malachi, there was no space. They were fellow escapees who, having endured the landing at Ellis Island and escaped the grinding sweatshops and vicious crime of the vermin-infested Lower East Side, had arrived by hook or crook in the land of opportunity that was Pennsylvania, home to Quakers, Mormons, and Presbyterians. Who cared that life was lonely, that jobs were thankless drudgery, that the romance of the proud American state was myth, that the rules of life were laid carefully in neat books and laws written by stern Europeans who stalked the town and state like the grim reaper, with their righteous churches spouting that Jews murdered their precious Jesus Christ? Their fellow Pennsylvanians knew nothing about the shattered shtetls and destroyed synagogues of the old country; they had not set eyes on the stunned elderly immigrants starving in tenements in New York, the old ones who came alone, who spoke Yiddish only, whose children died or left them to live in charity homes, the women frightened until the end, the men consigned to a life of selling vegetables and fruits on horse-drawn carts. They were a lost nation spread across the American countryside, bewildered, their yeshiva education useless, their proud history ignored, as the clankety-clank of American industry churned around them, their proud past as watchmakers and tailors, scholars and historians, musicians and artists, gone, wasted. Americans cared about money. And power. And government. Jews had none of those things; their job was to tread lightly in the land of milk and honey and be thankful that they were free to walk the land without getting their duffs kicked—or worse. Life in America was hard, but it was free, and if you worked hard, you might gain some opportunity, maybe even open a shop or business of some kind.

While religion was important in his private life ("Gentlemen, do what you please in my house," Jackson would tell guests, but "I am going to church"), he believed in keeping religion and politics, as well as church and state, as separate as one reasonably could. Despite his lifelong commitment to Presbyterianism, Jackson had never taken the public step of what was known as "joining the church" - that is, making a public confession of faith in a particular congregation, which in turn enabled one to receive Holy Communion.

The other major hurdle was that the two churches in the upper provinces had between them no less than four theological colleges, each with partisans who argued that in the interests of economy at least one of the others ought to be closed. This was passed, in a typically Canadian spirit of compromise, by allowing all four to remain open.

Kate had attended a Presbyterian church with her family in Norfolk; she’d heard how the God of Moses could flip out and go pretty damn nuts when things didn’t turn out His way.

The complete NIV Bible was first published in 1978. It was a completely new translation made by over a hundred scholars working directly from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. The translators came from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, giving the translation an international scope. They were from many denominations and churches—including Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Christian Reformed, Church of Christ, Evangelical Covenant, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Wesleyan and others. This breadth of denominational and theological perspective helped to safeguard the translation from sectarian bias. For these reasons, and by the grace of God, the NIV has gained a wide readership in all parts of the English-speaking world. The work of translating the Bible is never finished. As good as they are, English translations must be regularly updated so that they will continue to communicate accurately the meaning of God’s Word. Updates are needed in order to reflect the latest developments in our understanding of the biblical world and its languages and to keep pace with changes in English usage. Recognizing, then, that the NIV would retain its ability to communicate God’s Word accurately only if it were regularly updated, the original translators established The Committee on Bible Translation (CBT). The committee is a self-perpetuating group of biblical scholars charged with keeping abreast of advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English and issuing periodic updates to the NIV. CBT is an independent, self-governing body and has sole responsibility for the NIV text. The committee mirrors the original group of translators in its diverse international and denominational makeup and in its unifying commitment to the Bible as God’s inspired Word.

Two recent books that make this case are by James K. A. Smith: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009); and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013). Smith builds on Augustine’s idea that what makes us what we are is the order of our loves, and therefore what changes us is changing not what we think but what we love. Smith rightly critiques an approach to ministry that is too rationalistic and focused on information transfer and the transmission of right doctrine and beliefs. His response is that we change not by changing what we think as much as by changing what we worship—what we love and fill our imaginations with. He gives much more attention, however, to the liturgy and the shape of worship services, and little to preaching. I believe preaching can carry much of the weight of the ministry task of reshaping the heart. True to Smith’s critique, however, there is a relative dearth of evangelical books on preaching to the heart, in comparison with how to exegete and explain a biblical text. Some exceptions are Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” in Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Soli Deo Gloria, 2002), pp. 190–217; Samuel T. Logan, “The Phenomenology of Preaching,” in The Preacher and Preaching (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986), pp. 129–60; and Josh Moody and Robin Weekes, Burning Hearts: Preaching to the Affections (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2014). I would add that “preaching to the heart” not only is quite biblical but also is an important way to adapt to our secular age, in which inherited religion will be on the decline. People will be coming to church not because they ought to, because it is an entailment of being part of a social body or community, but only if they choose with their hearts to do so.

On the eve of the Revolution in 1776, more than half of the nation’s churchgoers went to Congregational, Presbyterian, and Anglican worship services—and supported the legal establishment of their churches. By 1850, though, these denominations contained fewer than 20 percent of churchgoers, while evangelical communities predominated the landscape. Baptists and Methodists alone comprised over half of the nation’s attenders.

If we know a man to be a child of God, it does not follow that he is to be admitted to fellowship in the Church. Paul instructs the Thessalonians, "If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." Here is one whom Paul will own as a brother, and will have the Church to own, and yet his present conduct, his refusal to submit to inspired counsels, excludes him from fellowship. The open communionist, to be consistent with himself, would stand up before Paul and demand, "How dare you forbid God’s child access to his Father’s table!" Close communion, in excluding from the fellowship in the Church and in breaking of bread, does not deny a spiritual relationship to Christ; but open communion, in making regeneration the condition of fellowship, pronounces a very unwarrantable and uncharitable sentence on such as are excluded. God’s strokes are safer than man’s kisses.

This is not all. We are prepared to go farther than to love in word and in tongue. There is not one who is called to advocate any article of revealed truth, who will not find a Reformed Presbyterian ready to stand by him and support him, though he may have been in keen controversy with him yesterday, and may be tomorrow. No denominational jealousy shall ever come over the spirit of a true Covenanter, to blind him to the preeminent claims of truth over all sectional interests. About forty years ago, there was a public, a protracted, and an ardent controversy, between the priests of Rome, and the ministers of the Irish Episcopal Church. In conversation with an Episcopal Clergyman, who complained of other Protestant bodies giving them the cold shoulder, I said, we are strongly attached to our own distinguishing profession, but I do not think any of our ministers are capable of looking, without interest, on your argument. He turned full before me and replied, "We never meet with a Covenanter but we meet with a friend." I would not own for a leal-hearted Cameronian one who, in like circumstances, could not extort a like testimony. I don’t know which is more contemptible, the man who would turn away from even an enemy in difficulties, and the man who could forfeit his own good opinion for the sake of any man’s friendship.

As Congregational and Presbyterian ministers have done this, and hold to a successive power to do it, which came through the church of Rome, a minister who was born in Connecticut, obtained the title of bishop of Connecticut, in a more direct line than our ministers have done. For he was ordained bishop of Connecticut, by three bishops in Scotland, November 14, 1784, who derived their succession from three bishops in England, who refused to swear allegiance to king William, after he had driven the popish king James from the throne. So that his line came directly from the church of Rome, without any connexion with the government in Great-Britain for an hundred years past. And this bishop holds that his authority came from Christ, as much as any can, and says, "A church in which Christ has no authority, cannot be his church: It may be the Pope's church, or Luther's church, or Calvin's church, or Wesley's church—but Christ's church it cannot be, unless it be founded on his authority and governed by his commission. The apostles being divinely inspired, and acting under the immediate direction of the Holy Ghost, in all things necessary to the establishment of the church according to the will of Christ, none of their successors could have authority to change the government they had established, unless they could plead the authority of Christ for the change, with as much certainty as the first apostles could for the original establishment, and could give the same proof of divine inspiration as those apostles had given."*

In old census reports, I found a hint of how British administrators had vivisected Sri Lanka in the early 20th century. In 1901…the census classified people into seven categories—Europeans; Burghers, Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, referring to Muslims of south Indian origin; Malays; and the indigenous Veddahs of eastern and south-eastern Sri Lanka. “A mere 10 years later, the matrix had exploded. By ethnicity, a Sri Lankan in 1911 could identify himself in any one of 10 ways, and then again in any one of 11 ways by religious denomination—a multiplicative tumult of identity. Slender distinctions were now officially recognized. A Sinhalese could be a low-country Sinhalese or a Kandyan Sinhalese; a Tamil could be a Ceylon Tamil or an Indian Tamil, depending on how recently his family had settled in Sri Lanka; a Christian could be a Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist, or a Salvationist, or he could belong to the Church of England or ‘Other Sects.’ Assembling legislatures based on such muddled ethnic loyalties helped the British by disrupting solidarity and nationalism because, as Governor William Manning once wrote to his secretary of state in London, ‘no single community can impose its will upon the other communities.

3. The object of the gifts, as stated by Paul, was “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith.” But they have been superseded in the popular churches by human creeds, which have failed to secure scriptural unity. It has been truly said, “The American people are a nation of lords.” In a land of boasted freedom of thought and of conscience, like ours, church force cannot produce unity; but has caused divisions, and has given rise to religious sects and parties almost innumerable. Creed and church force have been called to the rescue in vain.  The remedy, however, for this deplorable evil is found in the proper use of the simple organization and church order set forth in the New-Testament Scriptures, and in the means Christ has ordained for the unity and perfection of the church. We affirm that there is not a single apology in all the book of God for disharmony of sentiment or spirit in the church. The means are ample to secure the high standard of unity expressed in the New Testament. Christ prayed that his people might be one, as he was one with his Father. John 17. And Paul appeals to the church at Corinth in these emphatic words: “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” 1Cor.1:10. “Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus, that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Rom.15:5,6. The gifts were given to secure this state of unity.  But the popular churches have introduced another {345} means of preserving unity, namely, human creeds. These creeds secure a sort of unity to each denomination; but they have all proved inefficient, as appears from the New Schools and Reformed of almost every creed-bound denomination under heaven. Hence the many kinds of Baptists, of Presbyterians, of Methodists, and of others. There is not an excuse for this state of things anywhere to be found in the book of God. These sects are not on the foundation of unity laid by Jesus Christ, and taught by Paul, the wise master-builder. And the smaller sects who reject human creeds, professing to take the Bible as their rule of faith and practice, yet rejecting the gifts, are not a whit better off. In these perilous times they shake to fragments, yet cry, The Bible! the Bible! We, too, would exalt the Bible, and would say to those who would represent us as taking the gifts instead of the Bible, that we are not satisfied with a part of the sacred volume, but claim as ours the Bible, the whole Bible, the gifts and all.  All the denominations cannot be right, and it may not be wrong to suppose that no one of them is right on all points of faith. To show that they cannot have their creeds and the gifts too, that creeds shut out the gifts, we will suppose that God, through chosen instruments taken from each sect, begins to show up the errors in the creeds of these different denominations. If they received the testimony as from Heaven, it would spoil their creeds. But would they throw them away and come out on the platform of unity taught by Christ, Paul, and Peter? Never! They would a thousand times sooner reject the humble instruments of God’s choice. It is evident that if the gifts were received, they would destroy {346} human creeds; and that if creeds be received, they shut out the gifts. 

Sure, lots of people do. Anyway, it was a small Presbyterian church somewhere along the 101. Templeton, I think. The pastor’s name was Charlie Little, and he said that when you forgive someone, it doesn’t diminish or erase what was done to you. You don’t have to understand why they did it, and you certainly don’t have to be on friendly terms with someone who’s hurt you. When you forgive someone, you’re doing it to release their debt to you.” “Debt?” “Yes, you’re moving on with your life and you don’t require anything from the person who hurt you.

Isaac’s wife Salina “caught religion” when the Presbyterian produced an eclipse of the sun, and although she was most partial to the Baptist, she attended all the church services in Stay More, and Isaac sometimes accompanied her out of curiosity, which is the bottom rung on the ladder of motives for going to church, the other rungs being, in ascending hierarchy: 2, being too timid to refuse, 3, a sense of duty, 4, a desire to mingle with others, 5, a desire to learn the means of salvation, 6, a desire to be saved, 7, lust for paradise in the hereafter, 8, schizophrenic need to need, 9, insanity, and 10, sainthood.

The Christian religion isn’t an ideology, like socialism or libertarianism, tracked by self-identification. The Christian religion is a Body. A lot of people saying to a pollster that they identify as Christians hardly represents a movement. The question is, “Who goes to church?” And, congregationally speaking, Protestant liberalism is deader than Henry VIII. If adapting to the culture were the key to ecclesial success, then where are the Presbyterian Church (USA) church-planting movements, the Unitarian megachurches?

All our earthly benefits, and no small part of our spiritual privileges and hopes are wrapped up in it. Religion cannot prosper, if Law is not potential—if the minds of the people are to be perpetually agitated, distracted and tormented, by confusion, fear and uncertainty!

Peter, the biggest failure of them all, became the preacher that day. It was no homiletical masterpiece, to be sure. But people were deeply convicted—“cut to the heart,” according to Acts 2:37—by his anointed words. Three thousand were gathered into the church that day. Which church? Baptist? Presbyterian? Pentecostal? There were no such labels at that time—and in God’s view of things, there still aren’t. He ignores our categories. All he sees when he looks down is the body of Christ, made up of all born-again, blood-washed believers. The only subdivisions he sees are geographical—local churches. Other distinctions are immaterial. I

But when it is presented as the foundation on which civil government reposes, though it may satisfy a citizen, it ought not at all to satisfy a Christian. The truth is, there is no such "social compact." The idea is only a fancy. Human government is not founded on any such "social compact" at all. It either exists by force, or it is founded on the will of God, in every case. Its just foundation is the will of God. And when men are submitting to human government, they are not to consider themselves as merely carrying out the implied conditions of a "social compact;" but their duty is, to consider themselves as submitting to an ordinance of their God and Maker. Human

The social compact" may be a very good idea to employ for convincing an infidel in respect to the right of Law; but it is too low and loose an idea for a Christian; it falls far below the truth, and below the just solemnity of obligation.

This peculiarity is essential to the perfection of the Presbyterian system, and makes it what, it strikes us, no other system of church-government is, an adequate institute for gathering churches as well as governing those which are already gathered.

In May, 1806, the “Declaration and Testimony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America” was unanimously adopted and ordered to be published with all convenient speed.

Because Reformed Presbyterians hold tenaciously to former Covenants of the Church and conscientiously display the principle, they are rightly called Covenanters.