April 2015

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April 8: First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS

8 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

The First Presbyterian Church of Jackson was organized on a Saturday afternoon, April 8, 1837 by the Reverend Peter Donan and four persons: Mrs. Margaret E. Mayson, Mrs. Susan Patton, and John Robb and his wife, Marion.  The organization meeting was held in “the Old State House,” Mississippi’s first capitol, a small two-story structure on the northeast corner of E. Capitol and N. President Streets.   Peter Donan continued as the church’s pastor for four years.  There were no elders for two years, no deacons for six years, nor a Presbyterian house of worship for nearly nine years.  In the first two years of its existence, the church had but three new members.

In 1841, Reverend Donan was followed by Reverend  S. H. Hazard, who was pastor for little more than one year.  He was succeeded by the Reverend  Leroy Jones Halsey, a dynamic man and preacher, under whose ministry the congregation commenced to grow.  Halsey spurred the building of the first sanctuary on the northwest corner of North State and Yazoo Streets.  When Dr. Halsey resigned in 1848, the pulpit was supplied until February 22, 1849. The congregation then called as pastor the Reverend Isaac James Henderson, who served until he was succeeded by the Reverend L. A. Lowry on December 3, 1853.   Mr. Lowry was a fine pastor and effective preacher, but died of Yellow Fever after but two years service.  The pulpit was supplied from March, 1855, until a call was extended to the Reverend John Hunter on January 24, 1858.

[For more on the history of First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS, see the church web site.]

Words to Live By:
Blessed Zion: First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi, 1837-2012, is a wonderful church history, written by Dr. Sean Lucas and published early in 2013. The book’s preface alone would be worth the purchase price, in my estimation. There Dr. Lucas summarizes several lessons drawn from the writing of this history:

1. It only takes one generation for a church to die. The reasons may vary: “a poor pastoral choice; a failure to continue to preach God’s Word faithfully; a transition in the church’s understanding of mission; an inability to see and adapt to the neighborhood around it.” By the grace of God, First/Jackson has been blessed in making many right choices over the many years.

2. The quality of the ruling elders who serve the church. These men who form the Session of the church must be talented, godly men.

3. The value of long-term pastorates, allowing for great stability, space for godly pastors to “to shape the theological and experiential perspective of the congregation in favor of the grand, winsome, evangelical truths of Reformed Christianity,” and enabling pastors to earn the long-term trust of their congregation.

4. What Dr. Lucas calls “The Road Not Taken,” i.e., knowing that mistakes, even disastrous ones, can be so easily made, we must recognize and rely upon God’s mercy and blessing. We note that Rev. Peter Donan, the founding pastor of First/Jackson, later departed from the Reformed Faith, but in God’s providence, that was some years later and by that time he had no influence on the life of this congregation. “Churches that stand faithful through the generations are those that seek men who are faithful to the Scripture, true to the Reformed faith, and obedient to the Great Commission.”

5. The blessings of evangelical Presbyterianism. A great church will not “major in the minors” but will focus on proclaiming Christ and Him crucified.

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April 7: Rev. Thomas Edgar Hughes

7 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

Influences Often Unseen

The Greensburg Academy, located in Darlington, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1802 by the Rev. Thomas Edgar Hughes. He was born on April 7, 1769, in York county, Pennsylvania. After completing his preparatory studies at the Canonsburg Academy, he later graduated from Princeton College in 1797 and then studied theology privately with Dr. McMillan. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Ohio in 1798, he was ordained the following year and installed as pastor of a group of small churches in and around Mount Pleasant and New Salem, in Beaver county, Pennsylvania.

Rev. Hughes was the first pastor to settle north of the Ohio river, and served as Moderator of the Presbytery of Erie, at its session in 1806, when this Presbytery was but five years in existence. It was on this occasion that the Presbytery took up the matter of education and resolved to commit their aid to the establishment of an academy at Greersburg. With this, the Rev. Hughes opened his school at Greersburg in a log cabin, serving as the first teacher of the Academy. He also labored as the fund-raiser for the school, traveling as far as New England in search of financial and material support.

One incident, little known, serves to illustrate the importance of the school, of Rev. Hughes’s ministry, and particularly the essential role of a parent in praying for his or her children. Rev. Hughes was traveling on horseback one evening, when darkness forced him to seek lodging. Passing by one cottage, he heard the voice of a young mother seated in an adjoining garden, pleading in prayer for her little boys, dedicating them to God, and praying that in some way they might be used in the Lord’s service. Not wishing to disturb her prayers, Rev. Hughes moved along to another nearby home, where he lodged that night. There he learned from the family with whom he stayed, something of the story of this young mother and her children. Such was their story that Rev. Hughes made special arrangements for the education of one of the boys at the Greersburg Academy.

That little boy later grew to become a distinguished minister of the Gospel, a college professor, and the author of many books still used to this day. We have written of before of the Rev. William H. McGuffey, author of The McGuffey’s Readers, but this little account of his rearing, of his mother’s prayers, and the provision for his education, serves to show how the Lord uses one life to influence and guide another.

Words to Live By:
In all that you do in your life as a Christian, you can have no clear idea of how the Lord may use you in His kingdom. Your only duty is to seek to serve Him with all your strength and with all your heart. God will do the rest, and for those who truly seek to serve Him, the blessings that will unfold from faithful service will far outstrip our wildest imaginations.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. – Ephesians 2:9, KJV

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April 6: Birth of the RPCES (1965)

6 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

In 1965 the 142nd General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, General Synod, convened at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, on April 2.  On the same date and place the 29th General Synod of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church was convened.  Each of these synods carried on their work until April 6 when the two denominations were united to become the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.  The uniting service was held at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 6, 1965, and this service was followed by sessions of the 143rd General Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.  The business of the united synods was concluded on April 8, 1965.

Paul Woolley, long-time professor of church history at the Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, wrote in his foreword to The History Behind the RPCES, 

FOREWORD Three of the liveliest of the smaller Presbyterian Churches in the United States are the children of the action of the General Council of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in determining to demand in the fall of 1933 that the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions be dissolved. Presumably the General Council foresaw that the demand would not be honored. Probably, therefore, it expected to be the father, as it were, of at least one new Presbyterian Church. Whether it counted on triplets is dubious. Its technology was probably not that far advanced.

Population control was not a watchword in the early thirties but it has always seemed odd behavior to find the General Council crying loudly for ecumenicity and at the same time requiring the formation of at least one new Presbyterian Church and, in the event, three: the Bible Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (now a part of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod), and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

This is but one indication of the fact that large Churches are generally much more closely oriented to money and power than Jesus was. It raises the question of whether an increase in the size of a Church is always a blessing. The people who are running things become tremendously interested in their authority and in the means by which they can realize their dreams. Some large corporations have found it advisable to have their divisions compete. Buick and Oldsmobile are each not entirely averse to capturing sales from the other

From Twenty Nine Years of Age to One Hundred and Forty Three Years of Age

A new church was born on this date, April 6, 1965, at ten o’clock in the morning.  Actually, it was not a new church but simply the merging of two historic Presbyterian bodies dating back to the formation of our country.  The Evangelical Presbyterian Church had come out of the stream of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.  The Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Synod had come out of the Scottish Covenanter  heritage.  Both churches had been courting each other from 1957 to 1964 with continual contact.

Each denomination held dearly to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as being the inspired Word of God, without error in whole and part, the only infallible rule of faith and practice.  Each church body held to the subordinate standards of the Westminster Assembly as being a summary of the teaching of the Old and New Testaments.  They proclaimed the good news of salvation to a lost world as the only  hope of reconciliation with the holy God.  The fundamentals of historic Christianity, being only Scripture, only Christ, only grace, only faith, and only to the glory of God, were part and parcel of their belief structure.

Each church had been weathered by internal divisions in their past history.   In the case of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, they had the experience of coming out of the apostasy of the mainline Presbyterian church in the mid 1930’s, where a stand for the fundamentals of the faith translated out to being deposed by the modernists who had gained control of the church.  Then in 1938 and 1956, further issues over eschatology and Christian liberty as well as independent agencies verses synod control agencies, truth in Christian living, and questions about separation from brethren, brought into existence the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in 1961.

In the case of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, General Synod, the issue in 1833 was the relationship of the church to the civil government.  They had no problem supporting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but the Constitution a dozen or so years later was another matter.  Should its members vote, for example, in a country which did not recognize itself as a Christian nation?  Should they serve on juries, with oaths involved? Should they serve in the armed forces?  Should exclusive psalmody be the standard of  worship services?  All these were questions which were asked, debated, and voted upon by the church.

When the two bodies met concurrently in 1965 at Covenant College, the issues had been faced squarely by godly men for eight years.  Both churches voted to merge with each other, and combining their names into  the Reformed Presbyterian Church Evangelical Synod.  What has been a church of twenty-nine years became a church of one hundred and forty-three years years of age after one meeting!

Words to Live By:  The Psalmist David proclaimed words of wisdom for all church bodies and Christians when  he wrote “BEHOLD, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (KJV – Psalm 143:1)

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April 5: Van Horn on WSC Q. 13

5 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

STUDIES IN THE WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM
by Rev. Leonard T. Van Horn

Q. 13. — Did your first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?

A. Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.

Scripture References: Gen. 3:6-8,13; Eccles. 7:29; II Cor. 11:3; Ps. 5:4.

Questions:

1. What was the “estate” in which man was created?

The estate was innocence, the state in which God had placed man and in which he had pure fellowship with God.

2. What is meant by the freedom of the will?

The freedom of the will was a liberty to choose or refuse of its own accord, without any constraint or force from anyone.

3. Were our first parents able to follow the way of perfect obedience unto God?

Yes, they had perfect knowledge and were holy in their hearts for God had made them in this way.

4. How was it then possible for man to sin?

It was possible because at creation man had a freedom both to good and evil. His natural disposition was to good but because he was a mutable (subject to change) creature he, through temptation, submitted himself to evil.

5. What is man’s state today in regard to freedom of will?

A distinction must be made as to the type of man. Unregenerate man “by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation” so that he can neither “convert himself, nor prepare himself thereunto.” (Confession of Faith, IX, 3). Regenerated man, by God’s grace, has the freedom to do that which is spiritually good, but he does not do it perfectly for he is sometimes inclined toward evil. (Rom. 7: 15, 19, 21).

6. Who was responsible for the first sin?

Man was responsible for he freely yielded to the temptation of the devil. When our first parents willfully chose to obey the word of Satan rather than the word of God, they were guilty of sinning against God. Man had been put on trial, the trial of simple obedience, but man failed the test. It should be recognized that God is not the cause of sin. This can be proven from the testimony of Scripture, (Gen. 1:31. Ps. 5:4).

This can also be proven by the facts taught by Scripture that God is perfectly good and holy and that God punished all sin severely. The fall of Adam is the efficient cause of original sin both in himself and in his posterity.

SINNING AGAINST GOD

One of the greatest dangers facing the church of today is the trend toward emphasizing sin as being against men rather than the fact that sin is first and foremost against God. This is especially noticeable in the prayers of many ministers and laymen. Their prayers are full of the fact that men sin against men, especially in a social sort of way, but are almost void of the primary fact that men sin against God. If you will read once again the great Episcopal General Confession [see below] you will note that the thrust of the confession is aimed at offending the holy laws of God.

It is true that when our first parents sinned in the Garden of Eden they certainly sinned against each other in that their sin affected one another. And their sin certainly affected the whole human race as it was naturally passed down to all. But the important point of our Catechism Question is that Adam and Eve sinned against God. This is the message we should keep in our minds. This is the message we need to remember as we live our daily walk before God as Christians saved by grace.

Probably our difficulty is that though we know our sins are against God, we do not make enough effort to resist, to overcome temptation. A faithful preacher of God’s Word used to tell his people time and time again, “Brethren, you must practice being careful of how you live before the Almighty, Sovereign God!” Thomas Goodwin gave four rules to the Christian regarding keeping away from sinning against God:

1. Keep thyself from evil thoughts, for they defile the man (Matt. 15:18-20).
2. Keep thyself from evil speeches, because “evil words corrupt good manners” (I Cor. 15 :33).
3. Take heed of ill company, for that will defile the man.
4. Take heed of all occasions of evil abuse of things lawful, even they also will make thee impure, because it is a means to draw out the impurity of thy heart.

Such thoughts are excellent for us as we strive to live to the glory of God. It is also excellent for us to realize and to remember that our sins are against the Holy God, He who sits on the Throne of Heaven. (I Cor. 10:12-13)

Episcopal General Confession:
The original form in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father;
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
And there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults.
Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

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April 4: The Preaching of John Knox

4 April, 2015 in April 2015 by archivist | No comments

A Full Defense of his Opinions

knoxJohn02In February 1549, after an imprisonment of 19 months, Knox obtained his release from the French galleys. Since he probably obtained his freedom due to the intercession of King Edward VI or the English government (they had been negotiating for the release of English and Scottish protestant prisoners in exchange for French prisoners), he came to London, and was favorably received by Archbishop Cranmer and the lords of council. He remained in England for five years, during which time he was first appointed preacher to Berwick, then to Newcastle.

At Berwick, where he labored for two years, he preached with his characteristic fervor and zeal, exposing the errors of Romanism with unsparing severity. Although Protestantism was the official position of the Church of England since the reign of Henry VIII, there were many loyal Roman Catholics (papists), even in the high ranks of the clergy. The bishop of John Knox’s diocese, Dr. Cuthbert Tunstall, was an avid Catholic. Knox was accused of asserting that the sacrifice of the Mass is idolatrous, and was cited to appear before the bishop to give an account of his preaching. On April 4, 1550, Knox entered into a full defense of his opinions, and with the utmost boldness proceeded to argue that the mass is a superstitious and idolatrous substitute for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. (vol. 3 of History 54,-56). The bishop did not venture to pronounce any ecclesiastical censure.

The fame of the preacher was only extended by this feeble attempt to restrain his boldness. From a manuscript discovered in the 1870’s titled, “The practice of the Lord’s Supper used in Berwick by John Knox, 1550,” we now know that the very beginning of Puritan practice in the Church of England in the administration of the Lord’s Supper is to be found in the practice followed by Knox at Berwick, inasmuch as he substituted common bread for the bread wafers, and gave the first example of substituting sitting instead of kneeling in the receiving of communion.

“It was during this time [1553] that John Knox developed a theology of resistance to tyranny. He began smuggling pamphlets into England. The most significant of these was the Admonition to England. With this move, he had stepped into new territory, going further than any Reformer had previously gone.”–Francis Schaeffer, from A Christian Manifesto

Words to Live By:
We Presbyterians owe much to John Knox and we would profit greatly from taking up a fresh study of his life and writings. 2014 was the 500th anniversary of his birth, and so we had many posts last year on facets of his ministry. In his time, he stood resolutely for the Scriptures and was greatly blessed of God to bring about real change in his nation. Even now God has placed among us those who can and are speaking with bold testimony to the eternal truths of the Gospel. We need not name them. We cannot name them all. But we can all remember to pray for those whom the Lord will use for His glory in these trying times. May the Lord give us strong voices to faithfully declare His Word.

Psalm 20
The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble;
the name of the God of Jacob defend thee;
Send thee help from the sanctuary,
and strengthen thee out of Zion;
Remember all thy offerings,
and accept thy burnt sacrifice; Selah.
Grant thee according to thine own heart,
and fulfil all thy counsel.
We will rejoice in thy salvation,
and in the name of our God we will set up our banners:
the Lord fulfil all thy petitions.
Now know I that the Lord saveth his anointed;
he will hear him from his holy heaven
with the saving strength of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses:
but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.
They are brought down and fallen:
but we are risen, and stand upright.
Save, Lord:
let the king hear us when we call.

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