243 – Aug. 31 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Baptist by Conviction

 

1817 – Rev. Adoniram Judson, Sr. and his wife Abigail were immersed by Dr. Thomas Baldwin into the membership of the Second Baptist Church of Boston, Mass. They were the parents of Adoniram Judson, Jr. who was the renowned missionary to Burma. The elder Judson had graduated from Yale in 1776 and held strong to Puritan theology, especially repudiating Unitarianism and the Arian heresy that was rampant at that time. He became the pastor of a conservative Congregational church in Malden, Mass. During his brief ministry there, liberalism spread to the church family, and he was “dismissed” from the church. In time the Lord opened another place of service, but again he had to endure the trial of his son, and namesake, embracing agnosticism at Brown University. After Adoniram, Jr’s conversion to Christ, and later embracing Baptist convictions on his trip to the mission field, Adoniram, Sr. also came to the same conclusion concerning believer’s baptism, and rejected his pedobaptism, and resigned from the Congregational ministry. He continued to live faithfully as a Baptist until the Lord called him home in his seventy-fourth year. [Courtney Anderson, To The Golden Shore (Boxton: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), pp. 3-11. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp.476-477] Prepared by Dr. Greg Dixon

 

242 – Aug. 30 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

The Creeks Reject Christ

 

1838 – James O. Mason was ordained to the gospel ministry, and after training at the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution at Hamilton, NY he and his wife left to minister to the Creek Indians. James had been born on Christmas day in 1813 and raised by godly parents in the Baptist church in Granville, NY. He resigned from the mission on May 4, 1840 after it became impossible to gain a foothold in the tribe. He explained it all in a letter dated Jan. 10, 1840 in which he tells of being exposed hourly to the tomahawk and scalping knife. He said as he was walking some two hundred yards from his house he was stalked by three or four Indians and heard one of them yell, “here is the …nig(g)er missionary-shoot him.” Then he saw a flash and felt two balls pass through his coat and vest, hardly two inches from his heart. When I cried out, another one started toward me with a large bowie knife when I ran and lost them by a brook in impenetrable growth. These facts were made known to the chiefs but denied by the Indians. He went on to write that he cannot step outside without danger of being shot and when they lie down at night they fear that their house will be burned down before morning.  Rev. Mason returned to New York and pastored the church where he was raised and then accepted a call to the Bottskill Baptist Church in Greenwich, NY and served with great distinction. [William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 2:757. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp.474-475.]  Prepared by Dr. Greg Dixon

 

 

North Platte Canteen – YouTube

North Platte Canteen – YouTube.

240 – Aug. 28 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Presbyterian becomes a Baptist

 

1835 – James Armstrong, 59, died with a painful disease during the severe winter of that year. He was born March 20, 1776 but orphaned when his father, along with 22 others were killed by Indians. James was taken in by a loving Presbyterian family who raised him in the Christian faith in which he trained for the Presbyterian ministry. James moved to Savannah, Georgia to teach in a male academy and became an elder in a Presbyterian Church there but became dissatisfied with his infant baptism. Wishing to “fulfill all righteousness” he was immersed into the First Baptist Church of Savannah in 1801 by Rev. Henry Holcombe. On Oct. 11, 1821 he was ordained to the gospel ministry and became the pastor of the Fishing Creek Baptist Church in Wilkes, County where he served three churches as a circuit rider. He became associated with Rev. Jesse Mercer, a Baptist minister, and established a training institute that would later become Mercer Institute and is now Mercer University. [Bartow Davis Ragsdale, Story of Georgia Baptists (Atlanta: Foote and Davies, Co., 1932). P.43. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 470-471.]

 

Intended Knockout Game victim shoots back

Intended Knockout Game victim shoots back.

239 – Aug. 27 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

A Citadel of Christianity

 

1807 – Elder Ashbel Hosmer led the Baptists around the Hamilton, N.Y area to form the Hamilton Missionary Society. This was prior to the Congregationalists sending the Judson’s and Luther Rice to Burma. Elder Hosmer was pastor of the Baptist church in Hamilton and was succeeded by Rev. Daniel Hascall who, as a ministry of the church, founded the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. From this effort 1200 ministers of the Gospel went out across America and in heathen lands. It became known as the “West Point” of Christian service. 19 years after its founding, a few non-ministerial students were allowed entrance and the Institution began to change and in 1846 its name changed and was charted as Hamilton University. However, to shield the Theological Department from the state, they kept it as a separate corporation. Finally the 2nd law of thermodynamics took over and secularization in the end carried the day and what began as a great Citadel of the Christian faith is now simply Colgate University, a monument to infidelity.  [J.N.M. The Missionary Jubilee (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1871), p. 338. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. 468-470.]                   Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

 

An Embarrassment to Higher Education – Clash Daily

An Embarrassment to Higher Education – Clash Daily.

Christians Cave to a Confused, Corrupt Culture! Don Boys, Ph.D.

 

http://donboys.cstnews.com/christians-cave-to-a-confused-corrupt-culture

 

The early Christian churches captured and transformed the Roman Empire with the Gospel! Famous historian Will Durant wrote, “Caesar and Christ had met in the arena and Christ had won.” That would not be an accurate statement of contemporary Christianity in view of the major mischief of the U.S. Supreme Court recently, the Congress, and the President. It appears that Churches have lost their power, Christians have lost their purity, and the culture is in the pits. Christians have caved to the confused, corrupt culture and the reason is massive pulpit failure.

 

Many loosey-goosey preachers teach that Christians should be deeply involved with the culture: sing all the popular songs, attend all the vile Hollywood movies, watch the most popular television shows, wear the newest clothes (however seductive, ugly, and revealing they may be), and be able to “jive” with the most ungodly people even if normal listeners have no comprehension of what is said.

 

However, that is not the way it is supposed to be.  Christians are not to be moved by the culture; they are to move the culture. That is not happening today. Professing Christians, even members of Bible-preaching churches, are among the most worldly, weird, even wicked people in town! Most show no shame at their ungodly life and even defend it!

 

The prophet asked in Jeremiah 6:15, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush.” As years have passed, I have been surprised then shocked and stunned  at what I have observed in good churches: the general worldly attitude, the aping of the world’s dress standards, the use of four letter words, the loose handling of the opposite sex even in public. I wonder if parents have tried to instill in their children any kind of character. When reproved, they usually are offended and hardly ever are ashamed. Is shame passé like guilt, gratitude, and grace?

 

Those who declare that “It’s always been this way” are wrong. While there have always been some people without character, it has not been general until recent years. Early Christians influenced society by treating slaves, children, and women compassionately. Christians picked up abandoned babies left on the street to die and raised them as their own even when it was illegal to do so! Christ placed women on a high pedestal and Paul continued to move the culture of his day. The early Christians “turned the world upside down!” Pagan religions had the Empire by the throat and Christians broke that hold and destroyed the pagan religions with the truth. Christ’s birth even designates the date.

 

Christ established the Good Samaritan ethic to sacrifice so as to help others who were suffering. He also told us to treat others the way we want to be treated. He taught His followers to be gracious and generous to the less fortunate. Moreover, He taught us to pray for our enemies and do good to those who despitefully use us. Such teachings changed the culture and set the tone for two thousand years. The emphasis on doing one’s best, striving for success, developed into the university system of the Middle Ages; and the major left leaning, anti-Christian, socialist, anything-goes American universities were begun by the sacrificial giving of Bible believing Christians. Such institutions today are without shame, spirituality, and little scholarship.

 

High standards of justice going back to the Old Testament and continuing into the New were unknown in Egypt, Ur,

Nineveh, Greece, and Rome. Our world has been influenced far more by Jerusalem than Rome or Athens. But today the influence is Hollywood, New York, and Paris. Few Christians choose to be numbered as a “peculiar” people so they are just odd instead.

 

Jim Daly of Focus on the Family told the media it would be “foolhardy not to recognize that the culture is moving more” in the direction of support for same-sex marriage. He also signaled a willingness to work with abortion-rights groups to find common ground on adoption.  Such is the successor of Dr. James Dodson who was forced out of Focus for being too confrontational with the culture. Daly doesn’t understand that Christians are supposed to challenge, confront, and change the culture!
Recently the head of Exodus International apologized for his stand against homosexuality and their attempt to help sodomites become normal, decent people. He and his board closed down their work and faded into the corrupt culture. One reason given for the shutdown is that the culture is changing. Sure it is because of people like him who have no anchor and no chart to guide them.
Most Christians are mental zombies gorging junk food in front of a television set. Seeking liberty, such carnal Christians bounce from liberty to license to licentiousness.

 

H. L. Hastings, in 1844, visited the Fiji Islands and was shocked to find that a human could be bought for $7.00 (or a musket), less than the price of a cow! Moreover, the purchased human could be beaten, worked to death then eaten. Then, the Gospel came to the islands and about 1200 churches were established and no human could be bought for any price. The true Gospel changes the culture.

 

During World War II, on a remote Pacific island, an American soldier met an English-speaking native carrying a Bible. The G.I. pointed to the Bible and sneered, “We educated people don’t put much faith in that Book anymore.” The islander grinned, patted his own belly saying, “Well, it’s a good thing for you that we do, or else you’d be in here by now.” Christ changes the culture but modern Christians have been moved by the culture into a corrupt, cowardly, compromising life.

 

Christians should not only be right when the world is right but be right when the world is wrong.
We don’t want or need a church that moves with the world but a church that moves the world. There is movement today but movement is not always progress. All movement seems to be in the wrong direction.  At least, in the USA.

 

(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. His shocking book, ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters are all

available at Amazon.com. These columns go to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations and may be used without change from title through the end tag. His web sites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com and www.thegodhaters.com. Contact Don for an interview or talk show.)

 

Copyright 2013, Don Boys, Ph.D.

 

 

238 – Aug. 26 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

They Divided to Multiply

 

1801 – David’s Fork Baptist Church was organized with 267 members from the Bryants Station Baptist Church for that very purpose. This effort doubled the Baptist influence in the harvest of souls in the area east of Lexington, KY. Bryants Station had received 421 new members who had been saved and Baptized during the great revival of 1800-03. They had grown to nearly 600 before they divided to multiply. Their pastor during those days was Rev. Ambrose Dudley who had moved to that area from Spottsylvania, Virginia after his days in the Colonial army where he entered with a Captain’s commission. While stationed at Williamsburg he came under deep conviction for his sin and received Christ. He was followed as Pastor of the Bryant Station Church by his son Thomas P. Dudley upon his death on January 27, 1825. [J.N.M. The Missionary Jubilee (New York: Sheldon and Company, 1871), p. 338. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 466-468.]  Prepared by Dr. Greg Dixon

 

237 – Aug. 25 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Salvation Free to All

 

1843 – Ephraim Moore, who was born on July 1, 1793, saw his efforts against the hyper-Calvinist’s who taught that, “salvation is for the elect only”, and those Baptists who believed that, “the gospel should be preached to every creature” come to fruition. On this day and the next, the joint convention of representatives of the Holston, Tenn., Nolachucky and East Tenn. Associations, gathered to meet with the Pleasant Grove Church, in Cocke County. In the revision of their Articles of Faith, ‘Article 7’ a change was made as follows: ‘That the blessings of salvation are made free to all by the gospel, and that nothing prevents the salvation of the greatest sinner on earth but his own voluntary refusal to submit to the Lord Jesus Christ, which refusal will subject him to an aggravated punishment.’ This was a large and widely representative body of East Tenn. Baptists, and its adoption was unanimous. Moore, a veteran of the War of 1812 was raised in reformed Presbyterianism. He came to believe that he could repent and believe the gospel having read John 6:28-29. He was baptized and became a member of the South Baptist Church in Morristown, Tenn. Later he was called for a heresy trial on the issue mentioned above and excluded from the church, along with his followers, and became Pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church of Warrensburg, Tenn. for twenty-five years. Because of the faithfulness of Moore and others, the great missionary movement was launched among Baptists in the 19th Century. [J.J. Skethches of Tennessee’s Pioneer Baptist Preachers (Nashville: Press of Marshall and Bruce Company, 1919) pp. 382-83. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 464-466.] Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon