240 – August 28 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

He served over seventy years in the ministry

Anderson Moffett was born in Fauquier County, Virginia on August 28, 1746. David Thomas who had come to Virginia originally from the old Philadelphia Baptist Association had planted the Broad Run Church in that County when Moffett was but a youth. Many of the Regular Baptists of Northern Virginia had caught their fire from Thomas who they often referred to as Old Father Thomas.” He fired their souls while establishing them in sound doctrine without quenching their evangelistic zeal. Moffett was converted at an early age and began to preach when he was 17. His age is not known when he was imprisoned in Culpeper. There is only verbal evidence that this happened because all of Anderson’s records were destroyed by fire when he was an aged man, and too weak to rewrite them. His nephew Judge W.W. Moffett gave testimony that his father told him personally of the account of his uncle Anderson Moffett’s jailing for not taking a license to preach, and gave the date as the latter half of 1885 or the first part of 1886. He gave this testimony on Dec. 21, 1923. His father showed him where the Culpeper jail stood. The Culpeper Baptist Church moved to a new location and still stood as of 1993. Moffett was imprisoned along with many other young preachers in that jail. He was there when someone attempted to suffocate them by burning an Indian pepper plant under the jail floor. This incident evidently did not affect his health. God gave Moffett over seventy years of ministry, ending in his 89th year after he had served Smith’s Creek Regular Baptist Church for over fifty years.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 355-56.

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85 – March – 26 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

The Word of God prevailed
1771 – The Potomack Baptist Church was founded on this date having been planted by the Chappwamsic Baptist Church and their pastor David Thomas.  Thomas was a Regular Baptist from Pennsylvania and was probably the most learned of the early Baptist preachers of Virginia.  He settled in the Northern part of the colony and was continually threatened by ruffians with clubs and guns as were many of our early preachers.  The Chappwamsic church produced some of the greatest of our early church planters like Jeremiah Moore, Daniel Fristoe, and his brother William.  William wrote an early history of the Ketocton Baptist Association and planted the Potomack Baptist Church.  William Fristoe experienced the same treatment, and became the object of those same despisers of the gospel.  The planting of these churches was resisted by large gangs of men with clubs and rocks as they attempted to break up the meetings and beat the preacher.  One example involved a gang of around forty men led by Robert Ashby, who entered the meetinghouse with the purpose of disrupting the meeting.  Some stout fellows at the door threw Ashby out.  This involved the whole multitude in a huge fight.  Soon after, Ashby cut his knee, and it became infected and literally hung by the hamstrings.  On his sickbed he desired preaching, but when the preacher would begin preaching he would stop his ears.  He died a horrible death of great suffering.  So strongly did it impress the people that God had intervened that it put a damper on those that were trying to hamper the meetings.  We can say with certainty what they said of the early church in the book of Acts,  So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
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