January 8: A Methodist Tribute to JGM

This is the second of the tributes recently located among the scrapbooks gathered by the Rev. Henry G. Welbon. At the very back of Scrapbook #5, tucked inside the back cover, is the first issue of a publication titled TOMORROW. This was an evangelical Methodist periodical, and the following tribute to Dr. Machen appears on page four:—

Dr. Machen

[excerpted from Tomorrow: In the Light of Scripture. A Methodist Testimony for the Imminent, Personal, Premillennial Return of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Williamstown, NJ: Kenneth Cornwell, editor), Vol. 1, no. 1 (January 1937): 4.]

Dr. J. Gresham Machen, valiant defender of the Faith, internationally known New Testament scholar and expounder of Christian doctrine, died in Bismark, N. D., January 1, while on a preaching tour.

He was greatly respected and loved by his students in the Princeton and later in the Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Many a Saturday night were the theologs entertained in his apartment; many a football or baseball ticket did he hand out to some poor theolog; many a time did his reading of a humorous poem enliven the banquet hour!

Dr. Machen led the opposition to modernism in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. This finally led to the founding of the Independent Board for [Presbyterian] Foreign Missions, to give Christians the opportunity to give their support to evangelical missionaries.

This in turn led to his trial and suspension from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; and let it be written large—not for heresy—but for standing true to the Bible and its proclamation of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour from sin.

There is an exact parallel between Dr. Martin Luther and Dr. Machen. Dr. Machen was the Luther of the twentieth century. Some have criticized his method; his method was logical because it was Biblical.

Too long have evangelicals paid the bills of baptized infidels! What care they how much evangelicals speak of the Blood, the Book, the Blessed Hope, as long as they get their fat salaries as professors, secretaries, bishops, or what not? But just begin to pull the purse strings shut on them, and see what happens!

Dr. Machen and his associates were following the Bible method. 2 Cor. 6:17 “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”

2 John 11 tells us that fellowship or paying money to such agencies or men who do not preach God’s Christ is to partake of their evil deeds.

The man who starts out to reform any of the great apostate denominations today is just deceived. Five years ago we challenged a man, who has since compromised with Belial to gain position in Methodism, to give us one example of a denomination or faction gone over to apostasy that ever came back to orthodoxy. That challenge has never been successfully met, not because of that man’s lack of ability but because there is no evidence.

[*TDPH: Disputing with this author, there are at least two or three examples at hand. In recent times, the Southern Baptist denomination and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. And in the 19th-century, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.]

Clearly, Dr. Machen was right. Witness wherever you are. Then if wicked men rise up and usurp God’s place in the church, there is nothing left but separation—like Luther, like Machen! Oh, God, give us another!

[*TDPH: In his closing paragraphs, the author waxes eloquent as to how Machen’s position would have profited greatly if only he had been a premillennialist! We will spare our readers those closing paragraphs.]

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