Robert J. Morgan's Blog, page 19

What’s To Be Done with The Church?

The Parable of the Vineyard

Mark 12:1-12

This world simply cannot understand the living church of Jesus Christ on earth. The world has never understood the church. Let me give you an example. After the death of the final apostle, the apostle John, who died near the end of the first century, the apostolic era (the age of the twelve apostles) came to a close and the second century began with a new generation—a post-apostolic generation. In other words, the early church continued after the days of the twelve apostles, and these new leaders were persecuted and threatened like the apostles had been. But the church kept growing. The authorities didn’t know what to do with the church. It was starting to transform the Roman Empire from the inside out.

One of the earliest descriptions we have of the church was a letter written just after the days of the apostles (about A.D. 111-113) by a governor in Bithynia (in modern-day Turkey) to Emperor Trajan in Rome. The governor’s name was Pliny, and he simply did not know what to do with Christians. So he described them to Emperor Trajan.

This non-Christian governor asks Emperor Trajan, “What do I do with these people?”

They (are) accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath not to do crime, not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to be dishonest. When this (is) over, it (is) their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food — but ordinary and innocent food.

The governor went on to say he had captured and tortured some of these Christians, and he couldn’t find anything wrong with them except they would worship only their God.

The matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered (by the spread of this faith). For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. 

It reminds me of something Vance Havner once said. I can’t quote him exactly because I didn’t write it down when I heard it years ago, but it was something like this.

What can the world do with Christians?

They can’t take away our wealth, because it’s stored up in heaven.They can’t take away our freedom, because we are free in Christ.They can’t take away our happiness, because our joy is within us.They can’t defeat us, because we are more than conquerors.They can’t silence us, because the Word of God cannot be chained.They can’t kill us, because we have eternal life.

What can you do with people like that?

The Parable of the Vineyard

Well today, in our series on the parables of Jesus Christ, we’re coming to a very important teaching, which Jesus gave during the final week of His life. As always, the setting is important. So turn with me to Mark 11.

This is the story of the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the Sunday before His crucifixion. He had left Galilee for the final time and now He was coming to Jerusalem for His last few days.

Mark 11:1ff says: As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of His disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which on one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

And so they found this young donkey. Jesus sat upon him, and He entered the city offering Himself as the king of the Jews as the people cried:

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest heaven” (Verses 9-10).

Notice those words—Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David….

Here was the King of the Jews offering to bring the kingdom to the people of Israel. But look what happened in verses 27: They arrived again in Jerusalem, and while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. “By what authority are you doing these things?” they asked. “And who gave you authority to do this?”

In other words, although the crowds cheered Jesus and celebrated His coming, their leaders rejected Him and they rejected His authority.

This is when Jesus told His story of the vineyard in chapter 12:

Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: A man planted a vineyard….

Israel is and always has been famous for its vineyards, because its Mediterranean climate is so perfect for grapes. Archaeologists have found the remains of the second oldest known vineyard in the world, and it’s in Israel. Today there are upwards to 300 vineyards or wineries in Israel, and they were very common in Jesus’ day. The Lord actually told several stories or parables that were set in vineyards and were about grapes and vines and branches.

(So this man) put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some famers and moved to another place. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from the some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, “They will respect my son.” But the tenants said to one another, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and the inheritance will be ours.” So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Now, on the face of it, this seems simple to interpret. God entrusted His vineyard to the nation of Israel, but they rejected Him in the days of the Old Testament. He sent them Elijah and Elisha and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the Old Testament prophets. And they beat them and abused them and killed them.

And last of all God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, whom He loved—and they were going to kill Him too.

But now we have something odd.

When I preach, I usually begin with the Scripture text and proceed to explain it. I say, “Turn with me to Psalm 118 and let’s study this text.” I read the Scripture and I give the explanation. But once or twice I’ve heard preachers reverse this process, that is, to preach the sermon and then to bring it all together and end with the key text. Well, that’s what Jesus did here. He gave the sermon in the form of a parable, and He ended with his text from Psalm 118:

Look at verse 10: Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes”?

This is a passage from Psalm 118. It has nothing to do about vineyards and grapes. So why did Jesus use it? Because the principle is the same. Whether you’re talking about a vineyard or a rock quarry, in both cases the most important element has been rejected—the Son of the owner of the vineyard; the cornerstone of the temple.

Mark continues in verse 12: Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left Him and went away.

Now, I have a feeling most of us have just gone through that parable and we missed the most astounding phrase in the whole thing. It’s a very simple parable with a very simple point. But it’s not quite as simple as it seems. There was a critical, astounding phrase we passed over without seeing its importance.

In other words, as we read Mark 12:1-12, we missed something that is so important that once we see it we’ll wonder how we could ever have missed it. For you and me, the whole key to this passage is found in six words that we read right over without noticing them. Maybe you did notice them, but if not let’s look at them together.

Look at verse 9 again: What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill these tenants and give the vineyard to others.

And give the vineyard to others!

Now in this account in Mark’s Gospel, we aren’t told what the vineyard refers to, but in Matthew’s account of this same parable, we’re told that the vineyard is the kingdom of God. Jesus was coming to offer Himself as a King, and they rejected His authority. They rejected His kingdom.

And Jesus said that God is going to take His Kingdom from these people and give it to another group. He is going to take the work of the Kingdom from Israel for a time, for a season, for a dispensation—and He going to entrust it to someone else.  Who would that be?

In the Old Testament, God entrusted His kingdom to the people of Israel. He intended for Israel to be the center of the world, a place of blessing, a place from which the glory of God was cast on all the other nations like sunshine. He intended people from all over the world to travel to Israel to learn about Him and to discover how to live. Israel was to be the model nation on earth—a priestly nation to the entire globe. Israel was to be a blessing to all the world.

But that chosen nation turned from God and rebelled against Him, rejected His messengers, and killed His prophets. Finally the very Son of God came, and they rejected and killed Him too. They rejected the Cornerstone.

In this parable. Jesus was announcing something. God was going to take His kingdom—the work that He wants done in this world—and shift it from the oversite of Israel to the oversight of someone else. He will give the vineyard to others. He was entrusting the stewardship of His earthly kingdom to somebody else.

Who? Well, He doesn’t tell us. You cannot find the answer in this chapter. It was too soon. The unveiling of that information came later; it came progressively in the Gospels and in the book of Acts and in the New Testament letters.

The Function of the Church

The apostle Peter who was there listening to every word Jesus spoke in Mark 12 gave us the fuller explanation near the end of the New Testament in his first letter.

So let’s turn to 1 Peter 1:1ff: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia—

Bithynia—remember that?  That’s where Governor Pliney lived. All throughout Turkey, there were followers of Jesus Christ.

…who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood….

In other word, there is a group of people in the world that are different from all the others. They have been chosen by God, sanctified by the Spirit, and they are obedient to Jesus Christ. Who are these people?

Well, let’s go to the next chapter—1 Peter 2, beginning with verse 7

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

Does this sound familiar? Peter is reaching back to that moment in Mark 12 when Jesus told the parable of the vineyard, and he is using our Lord’s text from Psalm 118.

He said, in effect: God has taken His kingdom from the nation of Israel for a season and has entrusted it to “you who believe.”

In the original Greek, the word “you” is plural. He is referring to all of us who believe and to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is precious.

And look at verse 9, where he describes the church in four ways: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness and into His wonderful light.

Who is He talking to? He is talking to the worldwide family of Jesus Christ. And Peter uses four names to describe us.

1. A Chosen People

We are a chosen people. This was a phrase Isaiah used about Israel. Of all the people in the world, God has chosen His church to proclaim His glory and His redemption and His salvation and His hope. There are those today who want to dismantle the church and consign Christianity to the dustbin of history. But that has been tried before. It was tried in Nero’s Rome. It was tried in Stalin’s Russia. It was tried in Hitler’s Germany. The church isn’t just an organization that can be tracked down and destroyed. We are God’s chosen people to do something special on this earth.

2. A Royal Priesthood

The word “royal” has to do with the King, and we are His priests on earth, to minister salvation and to represent God to the world and the world to God.

3. A Holy Nation

In Exodus 19, Israel was described as God’s holy nation. But they rejected that designation, and now the followers of Jesus are a nation in this world—a holy nation. We are not a nation in the geopolitical sense of our world, but we are an invisible nation and an imbedded kingdom that infiltrates on the nations of the planet. And we are to be characterized by holiness. All the other nations are unholy. They are not sanctified by God’s purity and presence and pardon. But we are an invisible nation.

4. God’s Special Possession

And finally, we are God’s special possession. So many people suffer mental anguish because they think they’re not special. But you are special. You are special to God, and we are His precious possession. We’re special because we belong to Jesus.

I read this week about a man who paid a million dollars for one baseball bat. How could a piece of wood be so valuable? The answer—it belonged to Lou Gehrig. He used it as a college player and in his early seasons with the Yankees. It’s value is derived from the person to whom it belonged. Our value and self-image in life is based on God’s love for us. We are His special possession and we are valuable became of to whom we belong.

And why are we all these things? Verse 9 goes on to say: That we may declare the praises (that is, eminent qualities, excellencies) of Him who called us out of darkness and into His wonderful light.

We are the stewards of God’s kingdom in this present dispensation, and He has imbedded His children all over the world to proclaim to the world His excellent qualities, including His grace that is found in Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

The world doesn’t know what to do with the people of God, but our Lord does. He has a plan and He is in control. We are workers in His vineyard, and He will use us in these days if we don’t lose our courage or let the world intimidate us.

You and I have our faults and failures, and so does this church and every church. But…

We have the best philosophy the world has ever heard.We have the best theology the sages have ever recorded.We have the greatest system of ethics ever codified.We have the brightest hope ever imagined, the deepest love ever felt, and the most passionate mission every conceived.We have the world’s best book in the Bible.We have the world’s best symbol in the crossAnd we have the world’s only Savior in our Lord Jesus Christ.



And we have done more to improve this world than this world will ever acknowledge. There has never been a force for good on this planet like the family of Jesus Christ.

So what’s to be done with the church? What do you do with a group of people like that?

That’s an easy question to answer: You join them! You turn from your sins, confess Jesus Christ as Lord of your life, and begin seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

The post What’s To Be Done with The Church? appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

People Need The Lord

Introduction

What a year we’ve had. We’ve faced a tornado, a pandemic, an economic disaster, and a season of racial conflict—and all of this in the middle of most unsettling presidential election we can imagine. On top of that, a lot of people have had personal problems. We’ve truly wondered if we were nearing the end of the world.

But in the middle of it all, we’re likely to miss the most important lesson, and that’s what we’ll talk about today on this first Sunday back.

I’d like for you to turn with me in your Bible to Luke 5:27:

After this, Jesus sent out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.

Now in those days, tax collectors were not simply internal revenue agents. They were Jewish turncoats who were employed by the Roman occupying forces to collect money from their own fellow Jews, and they often used threats and extortion to do it. So people despised these tax collectors, whom they viewed as traitors.

It’s easy for you and me to despise certain people for political or economic or racial or philosophical reasons. Or even for reasons of personality. For example, there’s a particular politician I just can’t stand. I’m not going to tell you who it is, but I truly tempted to dislike this person. There’s a particular news commentator that I just can’t stand. I’m not going to tell you who it is. But I shouldn’t feel that way. It’s one thing to disagree with someone and it’s another thing to despise or disdain them. The latter is worldly thinking. That’s secular thinking. That’s the way our culture thinks. But that is not the way Jesus thinks.

Look at this again:

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him. And Levi got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to His disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

I’m certain that Jesus had a lot of differences with the people at this party. He had moral differences. He had religious differences. He probably had political differences. He had so many differences with them you would think He would be out of place among them. But He wasn’t. It was exactly His place. He explained in verse 31:

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Yes, Jesus said, these people are sinners. There’s no doubt about that. But I going among them to call them to repentance—and some will repent and that’s why I’m here.

Exhibit A is Levi, who had another name. He was also called Matthew, and he ended up writing the first Gospel, the Gospel that opens the New Testament.

The One Thing We Must Understand

Now, let’s go over to chapter 15 and we see a very similar scene:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus.

Probably the names were different, but it was a similar situation as chapter 5.

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered….

This Greek words means to grumble in such a way as to be deliberately overheard. Have you ever done that?

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

This verse 1 is the key to the entire chapter. Luke 15 is one of the best known chapters in the Bible. This is where Jesus tells three stories—the story of the lost sheep; the story of the lost silver; and the story of the lost son. But we cannot interpret these stories correctly if we don’t see verse 1. Everything flows out of verse one.

Jesus told these stories to the Pharisees and to the scribes who were unhappy that He was mingling with sinful people. But here is the one thing we must understand.

Jesus wasn’t mingling with the tax collectors and sinners in order to participate with them in their sins. He was mingling with them in order to bring them out of their sins. They were not rabble to be deplored; they were souls to be delivered.

That’s our principle too. We don’t mingle with unsaved people to participate with them in their sins. We mingle with them to bring them out of their sins. They are not rabble to be deplored; they are souls to be delivered. And when we see that happening, even a little bit; it’s a source of great joy.

That’s the key to this chapter. And so against this backdrop, Jesus told three stories—three parables. We’ll look at the first two this week and the third one next week. The first is the parable of the lost sheep.

The Lost Sheep

Verse 3: Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Notice the three-fold occurrence of the words joy and rejoicing. He joyfully put it on his shoulders, and he told his neighbors to rejoice with him and there was rejoicing in heaven.

When I was a child, someone gave me a little dog. In no time that dog was my pride and joy, and my playmate, and my best friend. And one day he went missing. I was quite young and I don’t remember much about it. But I do recall being greatly distressed and upset. I found some construction paper and crayons, and I started making signs – Lost Dog. His name is Tippy. If you see him call Lincoln 4700.” Back then we gave out our phone number like that. And I got on my bicycle and went to every power pole and signpost I could find and taped my little childlike signs. Well, to my great relief in a day or two Tippy came straggling home from wherever he had gone. And all my distress turned to joy when I found him. Maybe you’ve had an experience like that.

But Jesus is not talking about dogs or sheep or any such thing. He was telling a parable, which He interprets for us in verse 7: I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Who is the lost sheep? It is a sinner who needs to repent. A sinner is someone who has missed the way, who has missed the mark, who has fallen short of the expectations and standards of their Creator-God.

There is a four-thousand-year-old story that is the suspension cable of history. In Genesis 1, God created a perfect man and woman in a perfect world, but within two chapters they had made a mess of all that. And their sin has been passed down to us. We inherited the fallen blood and the sinful DNA of our original parents—and that’s why we have so many problems.

But in Genesis 12, God unleashed a great search and rescue mission. He took a man named Abraham, revealed Himself to his descendants, gave them His laws, and made of them a great nation. That’s the story of the Old Testament.

From that nation—from the tribe of Judah—Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem during the days of Herod the Great. He was no ordinary child. He was the virgin-born Son of God—He was God Himself in flesh appearing. That’s the Gospel.

Jesus lived a sinless life, but He was put to death by angry men who drained His blood with their thorns and whips and nails and spears. But His innocent blood had a redemptive quality we can never fully understand—the blood of Jesus Christ never loses its power.

And when any one of us—condemned, confused, hell-bound, dying sinners repents of our sin, we are like a sheep that had been discovered. We are saved.

What does it mean to repent? It means we are willing to change our attitudes, our words, and our behaviors so that we begin living for Jesus Christ and seeking to please Him. It means we say, “Lord, with Your help, I’m willing to change my life,” which really means we’re willing to let Him change our lives.

What that happens, Jesus said, “There is joy in heaven over each and every sinner who does that.”

The Lost Silver

Now, Jesus was a Master Teacher and He knew the power of repetition. So He immediately told another story that was very similar. Look at verse 8:

 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents.”

This is the same essential parable. Something is lost, and nothing matters until it’s found. And when it’s found, there is celebration. There is a party. There is great joy.

But there is one difference between the two parables, and that’s in the way Jesus ends them. There is a slight difference in wording.

Look at the ending of the first parable in verse 7: I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine….

Now look at the end of the second parable in verse 10: In the same way, I tell you, there is more rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinners who repents.

In the first parable, the Lord tells us generally there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, but in the second parable we’re told there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

This does not say the angels rejoice. I’m sure they do, but that’s not the point Jesus is making. Someone else is rejoicing, and the angels are present to observe it? Who would that be? The verse tells us: There is rejoicing in the presences of the angels of God.

I don’t know how to visualize this or describe it. But somehow on the highest throne of the highest heaven, almighty God Himself—who is infinite and eternal—shouts out a cry of joy, as it were, whenever any boy or girl or man or woman on this earth repents of their sin and comes to Jesus Christ for forgiveness.

I read in Christianity Today about a man whose real name wasn’t given for security reasons. The article referred to him as Zaine, and he grew up as a devout Muslin in the Middle Eastern Gulf Region. Even as a child, he memorized much of the Qur’an, and he was faithful in all the Islamic traditions. But his family moved to an English-speaking country, and he hated it. In his school, he started an Islamic group and he did everything possible to convert the other students to Islam. He prayed for the death of Jews and Christians, whom he described as pigs and dogs.

But one day a Christian man came to his apartment with gifts, including clothing and a car. He was kind, and he was helping them resettle. He asked if he could pray for the family, and he did so. Zaine was unexpected moved by that.

At the invitation of some friend, Zaine decided to attend church As he heard people singing and praising God, he experienced a surge of emotion he had never felt before. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. At the church, he received a Bible and he started reading this Gospel written by Levi—Matthew—the man we saw in chapter 5. Zaine fell in love with the portrayal of Jesus. He read through then entire New Testament, and he couldn’t believe how much comfort he felt.

One day he went to his room, locked his door, fell on his face, and prayed to God, telling him he would put his trust in Jesus Christ as Savior.

At that very moment, a great cry of joy, as it were, went up from the highest throne in the highest heaven as there was rejoicing in the presence of the angels. And just think, the same cry of joy went up when I received Jesus Christ as my Savior and when you did.

The Open Door

I remember years ago in the 1980s when we were in a building campaign for one of the buildings we’ve built here. Those campaigns were always hard and rough. During my years as senior pastor, I led five of those building campaigns and I’m thankful for the opportunity, but they were hard to shoulder. But during one of them, it all came into perspective for me. We had a banquet to ask people to give as significant a three-year commitment as they could. I was so tense and worried about that banquet.  But at one point in the program, a man named Earl Langley went to the microphone and sang a song, which had just recently bee released.

That song touch my heart so deeply that I’ve never forgotten that moment. It’s one of those songs that have come and gone, and you may not know it. But it still haunts me. It says:

Every day they pass me by;

I can see it in their eyes;

Empty people filled with care

Headed who knows where.

People need the Lord. People need the Lord.

At the end of broken dreams. He’s the open door.

When will we realize that we must give our lives.

For people need the Lord.

The only other year in my lifetime that can compare with 2020 was 1968, when our nation was absolutely torn apart. I was a junior in high school. The entire nation was engulfed in rioting. Colleges and universities were warzones. The fatality report from Vietnam was high and getting higher. President Lyndon Johnson gave up on another term in office. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago became a battlefield. And all across the nation young adults dropped out of society and became hippies. They turned onto psychologic drugs and tore off their clothes and wore sandals and tie-died t-shirts. They hated the establishment and all it stood for.

But out in San Francisco, a Christian couple opened a coffee house right in the middle of Haight Ashbury Street at the epicenter of the antiestablishment movement, and young people began finding Jesus. And for the four or five years, the Jesus Movement swept over California and over the world and thousand upon thousands of young people were saved.

It was that revival that propelled many of my generation into fulltime vocational ministry. My greatest hope is that 2020, with all its disasters, will help precipitate another revival like that—or an even greater one. But we have to be ready.

I remember one story during this time; it’s a story I read and I used in a sermon years and years ago. I still remember it. A lot of churches in those days were hesitant about the Jesus Movement. I was a part of that movement, and I remember getting some pushback from my own church and denomination. Not a lot, but some. People weren’t used to dirty, long-hair hippies invading their church.

There was one very conservative congregation that gathered one Sunday, everyone dressed in their suits and ties and nice dresses. They had gathered and opened the service and sang the opening hymn. And at some point in the service, the door opened and a hippie came in. He was barefoot. His hair was long and unkept. He had on sandals and a t-shirt with a peace sign on it. The pastor saw him walking down the aisle and paused in his sermon. Everyone’s eyes were on that dirty young man, and he walked down the aisle and came to the first row right in front of the pulpit, and he saw down and crossed his legs.

No one moved. But a moment later, they heard another set of footsteps. It was the old deacon and usher, who was more or less the church’s gatekeeper. He was old and gray and stubborn and strong. And he walked a cane. And down the aisle he came, following the young man. And nobody moved. And the old fellow got the young man, and he bent down on one knee, and you could hear his joints pop, but he sat right down beside that young man, crossed his legs, gave him a gentle hug, and the pastor resumed the sermon.

That’s our principle. We don’t mingle with unsaved people or get down on their level in order to participate with them in their sins. We mingle with them to bring them out of their sins. They are not rabble to be deplored; they are souls to be delivered. And when we see that happening, even a little bit; it’s a source of great joy.

…because people need the Lord.

The post People Need The Lord appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Was George Washington A Christian?

A great example of revisionist and secularist influences on altering history involves George Washington. During his lifetime, no one seriously doubted he was a Christian. He was an Anglican, and he willingly said and affirmed the historic creeds of the church. On this tomb, his family inscribed Scripture about the resurrection. Washington died in 1799, and during the 1800s, no one seriously questioned his Christianity. It is commonly understood that at the beginning of the 1900s, George Washington was a Cian. 

This article is based on the Robert J. Morgan podcast episode: George Washington: Deist or Christian? (Part 1). This version is edited for readability and is not a complete transcript. Listen to the Robert J. Morgan podcast for full context and subscribe with your favorite platform.

Exploring Washington’s Christian Roots

I believe it’s past time for us to celebrate the past – the biblical influences that helped create the United States of America. I’ve noticed that various other groups are pushing agendas to make sure that they include their contributions to American history and pass laws to that effect. Forces of secularism are teaching school children. At the same time, radical secularists are minimizing or erasing the contribution of Christians—the Biblical role in American history. American schools censor the Biblical message.

But no one can genuinely remove history and heritage, and trying to displace our national biblical history like trying to remove the pedestal from the Statue of Liberty. I’m convinced that had there been no Bible, there would be no America as we know it. The nation would not have been born as it was, if at all.

Not every founding father was a Christian, and not every Christian among them was perfect. None of them were. But the Word of God itself is perfect and infallible. It’s a mistake to minimize the foundational influence this Book of Books has had on the creation and sustaining of the new nation that was America.

The Life of George Washington

Now, to be perfectly candid, I genuinely do not know if George Washington was born again; if he was a genuinely saved man; if he had indeed placed his saving faith in God for salvation. Only God knows that. But in terms of his professed and demonstrated faith, he was Christian in his beliefs and convictions, and his Christian beliefs guided him in his character and conduct. 

And yet in the 1930s, as humanism filtered more powerfully into the currents of American culture, historians and biographers determined George Washington be a Deist rather than a Christian. 

Defining a Deist

What is a Deist? It’s someone who believes there must be a God who created the universe and the world and then abandoned it in all practical ways. There are different shades and degrees of Deism, but it is essentially a belief in an absent God – a remote and impersonal God.

The words Deist and Deism come from the Latin term Deus, for God. Deism says that God was the great First Cause of everything – that He created the universe – but that He does not interact directly with His created world. He is absent. There are no miracles. There is no divine revelation.

To me, it’s a bizarre and unreasonable position. The very nature of the word “God” would imply infinite perfection, love, purity, wisdom, communicative ability, and concern for His creation. In my opinion, George Washington was too reasonable and logical to hold such an unsustainable philosophy, but was he a Christian in his convictions? 

An Oath of Office

I want to devote two podcasts to explore if George Washington was a Christian. And here is the biblical moment in American history with which I start my book. It occurred April 30, 1789, at one o’clock in the afternoon in New York City, on Wall Street. There at Federal Hall, General Washington, dressed in a modest, double-breasted brown suit, stood on the balcony beside a copy of the Holy Bible. It was bound in rich brown leather, hastily borrowed from the altar of the nearby St. John’s Lodge. It rested on a red cushion held by Samuel Otis, Secretary of the Senate. It lay open to Genesis 49, the passage containing the blessings of Jacob to his twelve sons, destined to become a great nation.

Read More: Is the Bible true?

Washington laid his hand upon that Holy Bible and took office as the first president of the United States. Washington did not place his hand on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States, as hallowed as those documents are. Nor did he set his hand any other religious or secular book. It was the Bible that sanctified the moment. It was the Bible that provided the foundations needed for democracy. The God of the Bible who provided the authority for the human government. And after Washington took the oath of office, he did something else. He bent over and kissed the Bible.

That alone would indicate that he had reverence and love for the Word of God and its Divine Author. But in addition to that highly public, seminal American moment, let me give you 16 specific reasons for assuming George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist in his profession of faith. 

Reflecting on Washington’s Faith

Like everyone who studies this subject, I’ve used several sources. There have been books about George Washington’s religious or Christian faith ever since he died in 1799. But all of us who are interested in this subject owes a debt of gratitude to the extensive research done by Peter A. Lillback in his bestselling book, George Washington’s Sacred Fire. I certainly recommend it.

But now – 16 reasons to believe George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist in his convictions and profession of faith.

1. Washington never declared himself to be a Deist. Nowhere in all his writings does he claim to be a Deist, nor does he provide any endorsement or recommendation for Deism. When his dear friend, Thomas Paine, who had written Common Sense, which helped define and shape the revolution, later wrote a book decrying the Christian faith and the Bible – that book was The Age of Reason – Washington broke off friendship with him. The two men became alienated by Paine’s secular attack on Christianity. The Age of Reason was not in Washington’s library, and after its publication, Thomas Paine was no longer on his correspondence list.

Read More: America, It’s Time to Pray

2. Washington did declare himself to be a Christian. On October 25, 1762, he took the oath to be a vestryman of his local church, and he affirmed his belief in the historic doctrine of the church and the Bible. He spoke the creeds and made vows to the church and its principles. 

The official Mount Vernon website has a page devoted to Washington’s religion. It says, “Much has been written about George Washington and his religious or Christian beliefs. Some go so far as to suggest he did not believe in God, while others believe he was a Deist. While rather private about his religious or Christian beliefs, George Washington was an Anglican. The Washingtons attended services about once a month at two churches near Mount Vernon. During the Revolutionary War, Washington regularly attended services held by military chaplains and local civilian congregations. Often when he was traveling, Washington would stop for services at whatever church was nearby, regardless of its denomination.”

Speaking on George Washington’s Christian Faith

3. Washington came from a family of devout Christians. His father was active in the Anglican church, and his mother. Mary Ball Washington was godly and strong-willed and an enthusiastic teacher of Scripture to her son. George Washington’s wife, Martha, was a Christian and devout believer in Christ. No one doubts the vitality of her Christian faith and experience. Furthermore, Washington bought his children, who were his step-children, explicitly Christian textbooks, and also prayer books and Bibles with their names gilded upon them.

Washington’s Christian Words

4. More Christian evidence: George Washington spoke of his faith. Like many leaders, He was private about his religious or Christian practices and worked hard to be non-sectarian in his statements. Yet, sometimes he simply couldn’t help himself, and he spoke explicitly about Christianity. 

Consider what he told the Delaware Indian Chiefs when they asked for his advice about teaching their children. He said to them they would do well to “learn our way of life and arts, but above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. This will make you a greater and happier person than you are.”On October 19, 1777, he wrote a letter to General Israel Putman, whose wife had died. Washington said: “I am extremely sorry to hear of the death of Mrs. Putnam and sympathize with you upon the occasion. Remember that all must die and that she had lived to an honorable age; I hope you will bear the misfortune with that fortitude and complacency of mind that become a man and a Christian.”



George Washington: Character of Christian



On May 2, 1778, Washington issued these orders to His army: “The Commander in Chief directs that divine service be performed every Sunday at 11 o’clock in those Brigades to which there are Chaplains—those who have none (should) attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that Officers of all Ranks will, by their attendance, set an example to their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good Citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian.”On June 8, 1783, after the war was over and Washington was disbanding the army, he wrote to a letter to the governors of the 13 states, and he ended his circular letter. This letter is one of the most amazing documents that came from Washington’s hand. He concluded by giving them a prayer he had composed and was offering for the people in the new states of America. His prayer was they would all become more like Jesus Christ, for without that influence, we can never hope to be a happy country. Let me quote it precisely to you: “I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose of us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. 



A Knowledge of Scripture: Washington’s Christian Studies

Who is the divine Author of our blessed religion? That was Washington’s respectful and diplomatic way of referring to Jesus Christ, without a humble imitation of whom we can never hope to be a happy nation.

5. Washington displayed a broad knowledge of Scripture. He was undoubtedly an avid reader of Scripture. His favorite verse—or at least the one he seems to have quoted more than any other—was Micah 4:4, “But they shall sit every man under his vine and his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken it.” Washington’s view of what he wanted in his life and what he wanted for all Americans—a little place where everyone could sit under their vine and fig trees with security and reverence.”

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6. Washington loved, listened to, collected, and read sermons. On Sundays, when he was home, Washington went to church, and in the evening, he and Martha read Christian sermons that he collected.

Washington had a personal secretary who served him from 1784 until the President died in 1799. The man was named Tobias Lear. He wrote: “While President, Washington followed an invariable routine on Sundays. The day was passed very quietly, with no company being invited to the house. After breakfast, the President read aloud a chapter from the Bible, and then the whole family attended church together.”

A Collection of Sermons

Washington’s step-son, George Washington Parke Curtis, who was known as “Wash” and raised at Mt. Vernon, said, “General Washington was always a strict and decorous observer of the Sabbath (or Sunday). He invariably attended divine service once and day, when within reach of a place of worship—his respect for the clergy as a body as shown by public entertainments to them. On Sunday, no visitors were admitted to the President’s house, with only one exception: Mr. Speaker Trumbull. On Sundays, unless the weather was uncommonly severe, the President and Mrs. Washington attended divine services at Christ Church; and in the evenings, the President read to Mrs. Washington, in her chamber, a sermon, or some portion from the sacred writings.”

Washington collected sermons and had them bound for his library. For example, Rev. Isaac Lewis preached a sermon entitled, “The Divine Mission of Jesus Christ Evident from His life and the Nature and Tendency of His Doctrines.” Today we try to come up with catchier titles to our sermons, but such was the custom. 

Washington’s Thoughts on Sermons

In his sermon, Isaac Lewis said: “Either Jesus Christ was what he professed to be, the (One) Sent (by) God and the Savior of the Word; or he was a deluded enthusiast, who thought himself the subject of a divine mission and divine revelation when in fact he was not; or he was the grossest and most designing impostor who ever lived. One of the other of these must have been the truth.

If then his life and doctrines were such, as it is impossible to suppose they should have been having he has acted the part either of an enthusiast or a deceiver, it must follow that he was the person he calmed be and that the religion he taught is of God. And if Christ received his mission from God, Christianity is established on an immovable basis. The nations may rage, and the people imagine a vain thing, but the counsel of God shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure. The church rests on an unshakable foundation, and the gates of hell shall never finally prevail against it.”

What did Washington think of that sermon?

The Practice of Communion: George Washington’s Christian Faith

He wrote a letter back to Isaac Lewis, and he said, “For the Sermons, you had the goodness to send me, I pray you to accept my thanks. The doctrine in them is sound and does credit to its Author.”

I wish I could get the President of the United States to endorse one of my sermons or books like that!

These are the kind of sermons Washington collected and read to his family.

7. Washington was faithful in attending church, but critics have pointed out that he went for a long time without taking the Lord Supper. They say that proves he had turned away from his Christian upbringing. But there were perhaps reasons Washington did not partake of communion for some time in his life.

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Well, he was an Anglican, which was the state church of England. Washington observed communion up to the time of the Revolutionary War. Still, during the war, he was leading a rebellion against the man who, in British thought, was the head of the Anglican Church. So it was complicated. There are credible reports that Washington received communion from other denominations, and that after the war he again received communion from his church. But it’s also true that communion was not practiced very often in those days – only two or three times a year, and communion services held after church, not during the actual service. It’s a mistake to try to define Washington as a non-believer simply because we don’t know how often he attended communion.

Terms of Reverence

8. Looking more into Christian faith, in their extensive analysis of George Washington’s writings, letters, statements, proclamations, and speeches, Jerry Newcombe and Peter Lillback. They found that Washington used about a hundred titles for God. And he used the word “God” over a hundred times, and the word “heaven” over a hundred times. He called God

The Great Author of the UniverseThe Great Disposer of Human EventsThe All-Powerful GuideThe Almighty GodArchitect of the UniverseGiver of LifeGod of ArmiesGreat Director of EventsThe Greatest and Highest of BeingsLord of HostsRulers of NationsRuler of the Universe



Washington’s Reverence

Washington also used a variety of terms of reverence and respect to describe the Lord Jesus Christ.

As we’ve seen – Divine Author of our Blessed ReligionOur gracious RedeemerThe Great Lord and Ruler of NationsThe Judge of the Hearts of MenGiver of Life

Some people say, why didn’t he just use the name “Jesus” more. But part of the answer has to do with the culture of preaching in those days. One discovers the same phrases when one reads the sermons from the pulpits of the period around the Revolutionary War. In the Old Testament, the Jews did not want to say the name Jehovah or Yahweh, because it was so sacred. And there seems to have been something of that attitude in Colonial history. Preachers would talk about our gracious Redeemer, the Divine Author of our Blessed Religion, and so forth. They were referring to Jesus Christ, but they tended to use honorific terms. They tended toward elegant language, and, as a political leader of all Americans, this language well-suited Washington’s purposes.

Continued in Part II

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How To Become A Truly Loving Person

A Study of 2 John

I had great-aunt from the hills of West Virginia who knew just enough about the Bible to be dangerous. When I was in college, I had a new cassette tape record and I wanted to record reading John 3:16, and she fumbled around in her Bible for a while and then started reading a verse I’d never heard. She looked confused, and then she said, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t turn to the Gospel of John, I turned to John the First. Well, I smiled at her and said, “Do you mean First, Second, and Third John. That’s what they’re usually called.”

“Yes, she said, “I turned to John the First.”

She always called First, Second, and Third John, John the First, John the Second, and John the Third. And sometimes I find myself doing that do.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been in John the First. So today I want you to turn to John the Second. This is one of the shortest books in the entire Bible, and it only takes about a hundred seconds to read it. So let’s start by reading all thirteen verses:

The elder,

To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth—because of the truth which lives in us and will be with us forever:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.

It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have heard from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.

I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Jesus Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.

I have much more to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

The children of your sister, who is chosen by God, send their greetings

This book of 2 John gives us four aspects of what it means to be a loving person. In a way, that is God’s ultimate desire for us—to become a loving person as He defines love.

Introduction

To whom is this letter written? Notice verse 1: The elder…. That would be the apostle John, an original disciple of Jesus and the man who wrote the Gospel of John, the aforementioned three letters of John, and the book of Revelation.

But who is he writing to? He says, “To the lady chosen by God and to her children….” And he ends the letter saying, “the children of your sister, who is chosen by God, send their greetings.”

There are two possibilities and there is no way of knowing which is correct.

First, John may be writing an actual woman who had a number of children, and John, who was the bishop or elder in the city of Ephesus, had run into some of them and heard something that bothered him a little, and so his wrote this letter to her. If so, he didn’t give her name because it must have been a time of danger and persecution for Christians.



The other possibility, which is the one that I’m inclined to accept, is that John is writing to a church—say in the city of Hierapolis  or Sardis. He had run into some of the members in Ephesus and he had heard something that bothered him a little. So he wrote this letter to the church, but because of persecution he used a sort of code so if the letter fell into the hands of government officials, they wouldn’t say, “Oh, there must be a group of Christians in Hierapolis or Sardis. Let’s go arrest them.” If so, the sister church in verse 13 would be Ephesus.

When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask John whether he was writing to an actual woman somewhere in Asia Minor or if that was his way of writing to one of his congregations, being careful in addressing them because of the dangers of the time.

But now, notwithstanding that unknown factor, the rest of the letter is quite clear and wonderful, and it tells us four things about becoming a truly loving person.

1. If You’re Becoming a Truly Loving Person, You’re Discovering the Truth (v. 1-3)

There are four levels of becoming a more loving person and the first is in verses 1 through 3, which is the introduction or salutation of the letter. Notice how one word shows up four times. I’m emphasize it as I read it:

The elder,

To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth—because of the truth which lives in us and will be with us forever:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.

If you’re going to be truly loving, you have to love in truth—and you have to love the truth. If you’re discovering true love, that means you are digging into the truth.

Let’s make that as tangible as we can. What is truth? The truth is made up of accurate, authentic realities, and there are only two ways you can discover the truth.

The first is in the creation, in nature, in the cosmos. We can observe things and measure things. We can ascertain that it’s 240,000 miles to the moon, and that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and that 100 plus 100 equals 200. There are scientific observations and measurements. God didn’t create a random world. He created one with consistency. And so by observing His creation we can encounter accurate, authentic realities.

But there are other accurate, authentic realities we can never discover by empirical science—that there is a God who loves us, who became a man to save us, that He died and rose again for redemptive purposes, and that we have eternal life through Him. We can never learn that by observing through astronomy or geology. So we go to a second source of truth—the Word of God—His revealed truth.

Now if you study just the creation, you can see indications that will tell you something about God and you can experience what we call common grace—God’s goodness to everyone. Jesus said that God causes His sun shine on good people and on wicked people. He lets the gentle rains fall on the farms of good people and wicked people.  There is common grace. But when we study the Scripture, we learn about a God who loves us and who through Jesus Christ offers us saving grace.

Now, let’s take it one step further. The Bible teaches that those who observe the truth of the creation and receive his common grace can have genuine affection. They can have a general kind of love and attraction for each other and a degree of affection that can be very deep because we are still people made in His image.

But only those who truly come to know God through saving grace can become truly loving people because, as John said in his 1 John 4:7: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

This is the unique, transcendent agape love of God. This happens to people who discover and dig into the truth of God—the Bible.

In other words, to become a more loving person you have to become a better Bible student.

Let me read these verses again and put my own spin on them:

The elder,

To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth I’ve discovered in the Bible—and not I only, but also all who know the truth I’ve discovered in the Bible —because of the truth I’ve discovered in the Bible which lives in us and will be with us forever:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth I’ve discovered in the Bible and love.

I can personally testify about this. When I got married, I was like all of us. I was in love, in terms of affection and physical attraction and the emotions of it all. But I knew very little about the elements of true love:

Being humbleServing selflesslyPutting the needs of my wife firstMaking sure her needs were metBeing patient and joyfulRestraining my anger and irritation

And I don’t think I would have learned these things unless I had been taught how to study my Bible every day. Katrina and I both said a thousand times that the secret of a good marriage is making sure she had her quiet time every day when she studied the Bible and prayed, and I did the same. As we both grew closer to the Lord, we became closer to each other.

It’s not simply a matter of getting more and more information about the Bible. But as you study the Bible every day, you get to know more about the Lord, and you get to know Him better. You grow in Him. You grow in Jesus. And slowly you become more like him—more “agapish.”

So the first great lesson comes from the salutation of this letter—we become more loving by discovering and digging into the truth.

2. If You’re Becoming a Truly Loving Person, You’re Doing the Truth (v. 4-6)

The second level is simply the continuation of that thought. If you’re become a truly loving person, you are doing the truth. Look at verses 4-6:

It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.

John had probably met some of the members of this church (or, if it was an actual woman, some of the siblings) who had come to Ephesus, perhaps on business, and he was delighted to see them. It gave him great joy to see they were walking in the truth – the biblical truth that God commanded.

And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have heard from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.

There is a little bit of divine circular reasoning here. Did you see it. If we are becoming more loving, we are walking in obedience to God. And if we are walking in obedience to God, we are becoming more loving.

This is the growth cycle. We discover and dig into the truth, and we make our minds to obey it—to make changes in our lives so we conform to the truth.

I recently read a very interesting article by Rachel Maria, who calls herself a lifestyle guru, and it was one of the best articles I’ve ever read about marriage. Rachel said she had suffered through a divorce and had become comfortable being single and unattached. She was a school administrator, and she was very successful. She had a townhouse, a condo on the beach, a BMW. The last thing she wanted was another husband.

But then she met Scott, and they very quickly fell in love. The odd thing was that he was ten years younger than she was. They had a whirlwind romance, eloped, and got married.

And they ran into one problem after another. Rachel was a workaholic who gave herself to her job. Scott was more laid back. Rachel was having health issues. Scott was well. Rachel was remembering her earlier divorce and closing up her heart. Scott was withdrawing.

But then Rachel went to her church for counseling, and the pastor told her to memorize 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs, and so forth…

This is the love chapter of the Bible. Rachel had heard it before, but it had only been some nice words. Now as she deliberately memorized and pondered and applied these words, it started changing her attitude. It didn’t happen overnight, but her resentments fell away and she started living out this passage. And let me quote one great sentence from her article: “Things didn’t improve overnight, but my marriage began to heal and flourish. Like a dying plant coming back to life, with so much potential.”[1]

Now think about this. Rachel’s marriage was helped and healed over time as she learned to apply just four verses in the Bible; but there are 31,000 verses. Every one of them has a role to play in making us more Christlike, more loving.

3. If You’re Becoming a Truly Loving Person, You’re Discerning the Truth (v. 7-9)   

Now, let’s go on to the next paragraph. This takes it to the next level. If you’re becoming a truly loving person, you’re discerning the truth. The more time you spend in the Bible, the better you’re able to detect and discern anything that is false, harmful, untrue, and counterfeit.

I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Jesus Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

If the truth—especially biblical truth—makes you more loving, than whatever is untrue will weaken you. Look at verse 7: I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.

The apostle John was very concerned about false teachers who were traveling around and infiltrating the churches. All three of his letters deal with this. And he gave here the touchstone of truth—that Jesus Christ is God Himself who also became a human being. Jesus Christ is both God and Man. Jesus Christ has two natures in one personality. Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human. Jesus Christ had to be God in order to be pure and powerful enough to save us, and He had to become a man in order to shed His blood and die and be resurrected to provide our redemption. It is Jesus Christ—both God and Man—that makes it possible for us to receive forgiveness for our failure and sins, have a relationship with God, and have the assurance of eternal life in heaven forever and ever.

Anyone who denies that—

The Liberal ProtestantsThe MormonsThe Jehovah WitnessesThe MuslimsThe Hare KrishnasThe Baha’isThe SecularistsThe AgnosticsThe AtheistsThe HumanistsThe Hindus

Whoever they are—if they do not acknowledge Jesus Christ for who He is, they are deceivers. And John continued: Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Not the ultimate antichrist, who will show up at the end of history, but they are paving the way for him. They are anti-Jesus.

So John warns: Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead [who abandons the truth] and does not continue in the teaching of Jesus Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

If you become caught up—really caught up—in anything that pulls you away from Jesus Christ, your ability to truly love will be eroded. We have to keep studying the Bible to be discerning.

4. If You’re Becoming a Truly Loving Person, You’re Defending the Truth (v. 10-13)

Finally, and this brings us to John’s entire point in writing, if you’re becoming a truly loving person, you will become a defender of the truth. Look at verses 10 and 11:

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.

Remember that in those days, there were itinerant preachers and teachers. They traveled around from town to town. They would say, “We’re teaching a course this week in the truth about Jesus Christ.” They could get a crowd. Sometimes they could get inside churches. Some of these teachers were heretics who were upsetting the faith and damaging the church.

John was saying, “Do not help these people. Do not let them stay in your homes. Do not entertain them.”

Now let me very clear about that. If you have a son or daughter or brother or sister or father or mother who isn’t living for the Lord, and they want to come to stay a few days you—that’s a very different matter. That isn’t what John is talking about. He is talking about aiding and abetting people who are attacking the truth of Scripture or teaching something that is contrary to the truth.

In today’s terms, maybe he is saying, “Don’t send in your money and support some preacher on television whose message is not biblically sound.”

It seems like a contradiction—Be a loving person, but do not show that person any hospitality. But it’s based on sound reasoning. If you’re going to be a loving person, you have to defend biblical truth—because that’s the genuine message of the God who makes us loving.

Conclusion

Amy Joy Hess is a Christian writer who gave her testimony like this: She said that when she was a teenager, she desperately wanted a relationship with God and she wanted very badly to hear His voice. Whatever that meant, she wanted to hear His voice. She actually wanted to hear it audibly, and this became very important for her. She had a lot of inner turmoil and she needed the voice of God.

One day she heard about a man who went out into the woods and he fasted and prayed for three days and he said that he heard the voice of God. He heard it aloud. So she decided she would do the same. She lived in the country with her parents and sibling, and so one dark evening she slipped out of the house and braved her fear of snakes and spiders and went out into woods. She walked and shouted. She walked and prayed. She walked and listened.

There were a lot of noises in the woods—crickets and the nearby river and other sounds. She walked through woods until two o’clock in the morning, and she went home. By the time she got back, she was exhausted, her legs were cramped, and she found that her family was waiting upset, not knowing where she was.

It was all a very frustrating experience.

Well, Amy went on to college that fall, but she took all her turmoil with her. She battled depression and confusion. One day she was alone in the gymnasium shooting basketballs and crying. Just then a man entered the gym with his family. They saw her and came over. The man came up to her and just said, “Jesus loves you.” He said it several times. “Jesus loves you.” And then he said, “Things aren’t always going to make sense. And God’s not always going to talk to you the way you want. But He loves you. He wants you to read the Bible because it’s His Word to you.”

It really was as if God spoke to her. She went home and started a lifetime of Bible study. Now she overflows with Scripture. God’s Word has taught her how to live and it had taught her how to love. [2]

He can do the same for you and me!

[1] http://lewoman.com/saved-my-marriage/

[2] https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2016/05/when-god-spoke-to-me/

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My Mother’s Remnants

A Mother’s Remnants

Every Scrap of Kindness Is More Than It Seams

It’s hard to mask the suffering in the world right now, but a cheerful smile behind a colorful mask can lessen the pain.

My mother (in the center with a blue blouse above) was a schoolteacher, a homemaker, and a quilter. She gave birth to me nearly seventy years ago, but I still tuck myself into bed each night under one of her handsewn quilts. Someone said, “Those who sleep under a quilt, sleep under a blanket of love.”

The Edith Morgan quilt I keep on my bed is called a “cathedral window.” It’s very intricate, for every square is doubled over and shaped in the form of a diamond within a circle. It was a labor of love and a piece of art.

Though her handiwork was painstaking and priceless, I never knew her to sell one of her quilts. They went to friends and family, and a few were stored in the closet for a generation yet unborn.

When she passed away in 2000, Mom left behind a chest full of remnants, all cut and colorful, squared and ready to go. She didn’t expect to die, and she was planning her next project. Quilting kept the winter blues at bay. But with her passing, those final remnants were forgotten like the fallen leaves of autumn. They lived in the darkness in the old chest in the attic, seeing a flash of daylight only when a curious grandchild opened the lid, peered in, and carefully lowered it again so as not to pinch little fingers.

Two decades passed and there my mom’s remnants lay, buried in the darkness, never used, never fulfilling their intended purpose.

Then came the coronavirus and the world flared into crisis.

Mom’s granddaughter and my niece, Sara, a nurse, is treating coronavirus patients in a local hospital that ran out of facemasks. Sara called her mother requesting help, and my sister Ann happened to remember that box of colorful patches and squares of cloth—all cut from dresses and tablecloths and old shirts and pajamas, and all worthless. Until now.

Ann drove to our old homeplace, opened the chest, and piled the remnants into a basket. Returning home, she found her needle and thread and began making miniature quilts of her own—colorful works of art, lifesaving masks for nurses, doctors, and patients. Tiny blankets for stopping the bug and warming the heart.

It is a legacy of leftovers. My mother could never have imagined how her assortment of carefully cut squares would be used. I’m reminded of Aesop’s words: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

Admittedly, these are insufficient for medical wards and operating rooms, but they serve the patients very well, as well as medical professionals in less intense settings. No doctor ever donned such a splendid mask, one designed to bring a smile to patients while, hopefully, saving lives.

Wearable Americana. A Joseph’s coat for the face. Heirloom for one’s health.

I hazard to guess few of them will be tossed away when their job is done. Perhaps they’ll be washed, sanitized, and used again and again. They’ll certainly be added to the museum of memories of those whose smiles were hidden beneath the masks. I may frame mine and hang it in the bedroom near its larger cousin.

So here’s my point. We can all become masked strangers committing indiscriminate acts of kindness. A smile. A “God bless you.” An encouraging note or phone call. An extra gift to the charity we support. A salute to a police officer. A wave to an emergency responder. A prayer for our doctor. A song from our porches. A shout to the neighbors across the fence or on the adjoining balcony. An extra bottle of sanitizer for an elderly friend.

            This is a time for blanketing our world with patience, kindness, and self-sacrifice. No scrap of sympathy is ever wasted, for God knows all the odds and ends of our decency. Our lives are not simply a mishmash of loose threads. They are preplanned and precious, and our deeds echo into the future, even beyond our own span of days. Almighty God knows how to stitch the remnants of our experiences into cathedral windows. The kindness we do takes on a life of its own—and only eternity will tell the full story.

I wish my mother could know about her final remnants.

But then, somehow, I think she does. She knew what our world is now learning—a life hemmed in kindness will never unravel.

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Christ and the Antichrist in Today’s World

A Study of 1 John 2:12-23

Do not love the world
or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is
not in them. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh and the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life—is not from the Father, but from the world. And
the world and its lusts are passing away, but whoever does the will of God
abides forever (1 John 2:15-17).

***

When the coronavirus crisis began to grab the headlines,
Joshua Rowe and I were in California, and we were talking about whether a
global pandemic like this was a sign of the Last Days. Joshua said, “I don’t
think this is leading immediately to the Tribulation; this is what Jesus called
the birth pangs.” And that sentence has stayed with me. In Matthew 24, Jesus
spoke of a number of global disasters that will begin to happen during the Last
Days, and he said, “All these things are the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew
24:8).

In other words, before Christ comes again the world will
suffer painful contractions, like a woman does before giving birth to a child.
Our world is reaching an acceleration point. And what happens when we lose
control of what’s ahead? I think we already have! But I want to tell you the
Lord hasn’t. His hand is still on the wheel, and what we need to do in times
like this is to consult His Word. Today we’re going to consult the letter of 1
John and continue our series into the epistles of the apostle John.

I’ve always been intimidated by preaching from 1 John. This
is both the simplest and the most complex book of the Bible. The Greek text of
this book is so simple it’s often used as a textbook for beginning Greek
students, and yet after years of studying and reading 1 John, I still don’t
know quite how to analyze this letter. The Bible is the curriculum in God’s
school. This is God’s curriculum for you and me. And in any school I’ve ever
attended, the curriculum becomes more advanced as you progress into your
studies. That’s true for the Bible. The latter books of the Bible are a sort of
Graduate School—and the book of 1 John is both the simplest and one the most
complex piece of literature I’ve ever tried to deal with.

But let’s give it a try with the paragraph that begins here
in 1 John 2, with verse 12 and goes through verse 18.

1. Those Who Live
for Christ (verses 12-14)

In this chapter, verses 12-14 describe what it means to live
for Christ: I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been
forgiven on account of His name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know
Him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have
overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear children, because you know the
Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the
beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of
God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

This is no easy paragraph
to exegete. In the middle of John’s set of exhortations, he puts in this poetic
insert. It’s as though he just wrote a little song and stuck it into the middle
of his message, and commentators don’t always agree on what he means by
fathers, young men, and children. But I want to show you the interpretation
that seems most obvious to me. I’ve taken these elements and charted them in a
little diagram. Now, there is some poetic repetition in this, so let’s reduce
it down to its basic message.         

New Christians

When we first come to Jesus Christ, there’s
a tremendous sense of relief. Suddenly we realize that we are perfectly free from
all our feelings of guiltiness and shame, and we have a living relationship
with the God who made us.

I just read the testimony of a man named
Frank Barker. Beginning in high school he started living a reckless life. He
graduated and went to college on a ROTC scholarship, then became a jet pilot in
the U.S. Navy. One weekend while in flight training school, he came back to
Birmingham and had a wild weekend. On his way back to Pensacola, he fell asleep
at the wheel, and his car came to rest with the headlights shining on a sign
that had been nailed to a tree. The sign said, “The wages of sin is death.” He
said, “I think God is trying to tell me something.” Sometime later, Barker went
to an Air Force Chaplain and asked about becoming a Christian. The chaplain
told him that God offered salvation as a free gift through Jesus Christ. Barker
said, in effect, “Something like that can’t be free. You’ve got to do something
for it.” But as Barker began to realize the grace of God and the Gospel of
Christ, he surrendered his will and transferred his trust to Christ. And, he
said, his life changed immediately.[1]

A lot of times we talk about our chains
falling off when we come to Christ. That’s a description of what happens when
you turn your life over to Christ. That’s the experience of new Christians. You
have a tremendous sense that your sins are forgiven on account of Christ and
you know have a relationship with God.

Growing Christians

Now, John says something about growing
Christians—they are strong and the Word of God lives within them. I read a blog
this week by a woman named Sarah Ann who is wife and mother and a blogger. She
described how draining it was to have a two-year-old autistic child and a
bright-eyed baby boy who refused to sleep. She became emotionally and
spiritually exhausted. Then one day she saw her Bible and realized she hadn’t
read anything in it for a week or so. She simply turned to the book of Psalms
and began reading one Psalm a day. She couldn’t believe how the verses spoke to
her, and she found a notebook and started jotting down the verses and truths
that came to her. After finishing the book of Psalms, she went on to the
Gospels, and she started filling up one notebook after another. It reminded me
what Katrina used to do every morning. I have boxes of old spiral notebooks in
the closet full of notes from her morning Bible studies. This is simply the bottom-line
secret of growing Christians—the regular intake of the Word of God. And it’s
God’s Word that helps us overcome the evil one.

Mature Christians

At some point we begin to show the signs of
maturity—and what does John say about grown-up Christians? This is remarkable.
He doesn’t have a list of great things they do. He doesn’t have a list of great
qualities they possess. He simply says they know Him who is from the beginning.
They have an ongoing, daily, abiding friendship with the eternal God. At some
point you have such a sense of God’s presence in your life that you know He is
with you and you can trust Him all the time.

There is something utterly wonderful about maturing into the
realization that you are constantly abiding in the presence of God. It’s not
just when you come to church. It’s not just when you’re reading the Bible. The
Lord is near you and with you amid the stress and strain of every day. He’s
your friend.

I love songs that talk about the Lord being our friend.
Several years ago, sang a song here, “I Am a Friend of God.” It was one of my
favorites. When I was about twenty years old, I learned a hymn by Wilber
Chapman that said:

Jesus,
what a friend for sinners,

Jesus,
lover of my soul.

Friends
may fail me, foes assail me,

He,
my Savior, makes me whole.

Before Katrina passed away, she had a lot of trouble
sleeping at night and she couldn’t read, and I didn’t know what to do for her.
But the kids gave us an Alexa, and every night after I got her in bed and we
had prayer and said goodnight, I would hear her say, “Alexa, play ‘What a
Friend We Have in Jesus.’” And she would listen to that and other great hymns
through the night. Sometimes when I came to wake up her in the morning, those
songs were still going. I think we come to a point when we grow into the
wonderful sense of the abiding presence of God with us, like an ever-present Friend.

2. Those Who Live
for Anti-Christ

That’s a description of those of us who are living for
Christ. We need to be accelerating in our walk with Christ. But down at verse
18, John talks about the acceleration of evil in our world today and about
those who are living, not for Christ, but for antichrist: Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the
antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know
it is the last hour.

John said he was living in the last hour. Every generation
of believers have felt Jesus would come again in their lifetime, and that’s the
way we’re supposed to feel. We’re to expect His return at any time. But if John
was living in the last hour—as God understands the calendar and the clock—we
must be living in the last few minutes, as it were, of the last hour. We’re
getting close to midnight.

And, he said, the antichrist is coming. I’ve underlined
those words in my Bible: The antichrist is coming. He said: Dear friends, this is the last hour: and you
have heard that the antichrist is coming. This was a well-known and
much-discussed truth in John’s day. John had undoubtedly taught it himself.

Throughout the Bible, there are prophecies and prototypes of
the antichrist.

As I understand it, it first began with a man
named Nimrod in the Bible. He was said to be a mighty hunter—and apparently
what he was hunting was not animals but people. He was a warrior, and he
established the city of Babylon—which from the book of Genesis to the book of
Revelation, represents a world system totally opposed to the rule of heaven.



And then we have Pharaoh at the Red Sea, who was
determined to annihilate the Jewish people. This is always the relentless drive
of the spirit of the antichrist—to annihilate the Jewish people. By wiping out
the Jewish people, Satan knew he could keep the Messiah from coming.



We come to the book of Daniel. The prophet
Daniel gives us detailed information about the coming world ruler in multiple
of his chapters. In Daniel 9, we’re told that in the last days a powerful man
will arise and he will be charismatic and commanding, and he will gain control
of the governments of the world. He’ll establish a seven-year treaty with
Israel, but after three-and-a-half years, he’ll march into the rebuilt Jewish
temple, put his image inside it, and demand to be worshipped. When the Jews
resist, he will wage war against them and this will be a time of great
tribulation.



And then we come to the book of Esther, and the
wicked Haman was determined to annihilate the Jewish people.



In between the Old and New Testaments, an evil
man lived named Antiochus Epiphanes, who Daniel described as the authorized
prototype of the antichrist.



Then we come to the book of Matthew, and Herod
the Great sought to destroy all the baby boys of Bethlehem to prevent the Messiah’s
first coming.



Jesus spoke of the antichrist and the ensuing
Great Tribulation in Matthew 24 and 25.



Paul taught in 2 Thessalonians 2: Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for
that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is
revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself
over everything that is called God, so that he set himself up in God’s temple,
proclaiming himself to be God.



And John, the author of the epistle we are
studying, wrote in Revelation 13: The
beast [the antichrist] was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies
and to exercise authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to
blaspheme god and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live
in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and conquer
them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and
nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names
have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from
the creation of the world.

In the last century, a wicked dictator arose with demonic
power seeking to annihilate the Jewish people.

There is an evil thread throughout history—it is worse than
evil; it is worse than wicked—that is opposed to God’s people, both the Jews
and the Christians. And this thread is leading to the future antichrist.

So the Bible teaches that at some point the world is going
to face a crisis so great, so severe, so terrible that only one man will be
able to arise and handle it. And this man will become inflamed with Satan and
seek to destroy once and for all the Jewish people and to prevent the second
coming of Christ.

So in John’s day, the people were talking about this. Maybe they
were saying:

Is it Caligula?Is it ClaudiusIs it Nero?Is it Vespasian?Is it Titus?Is it Domitian?

Just like today we wonder—is the antichrist alive yet? Is he
in the world? We don’t know.

But let’s get back to 1 John 2:18. John said: Dear children, this is the last hour; and as
you have heard the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrist have come.

In other words, the world is already full of anti-Christian
forces. Look at verse 22: Who is the
liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the
antichrist.

Whoever rejects Jesus Christ and opposes him is anti –
Christ. That’s what anti-Christ means—against Christ. There are tremendous
forces right now, in the world and in America, that are anti-Christ.

In chapter 4, John is going to say that even now the spirit
of the antichrist already at work in the world. We see that all around us. You
know, of course, about how the Christian organization called Samaritan’s Purse
moved in here and worked alongside us after the tornado. What they did, and how
they partnered The Donelson Fellowship and our community is amazing. Well, you
probably also read how Samaritan’s Purse moved into Central Park setting up
mobile hospitals to work at great personal risk during this pandemic. They
partnered with Mount Sinai hospital on Fifth Avenue. They set up these field hospitals
to treat any and every man, woman, or child who needs help, no questions asked,
no discrimination of any kind.

Well, Samaritan’s Purse has come under withering criticism
and under tremendous pressure to tear down their hospitals and leave — simply
because in the documents for their workers is a statement of belief for a
biblically-defined marriage. The world is full of hatred directed at
humanitarians. It’s hatred directed at Christ. It’s the spirit of the
antichrist in the world.

Over in Greenville, South Carolina, a U.S. District Court
has just forced the county school system there to pay nearly a half-million dollars
to American Humanist Association because the school included a prayer in its
graduation service. This is hatred. This is intolerance. The school officials
and the students could espouse atheism or agnosticism or humanism—all of them
religions, and that would be perfectly all right. They could have used the word
“God” or the word “Jesus” as a curse word, and that is perfectly all right. But
to say a word that is Christian in nature means you have to give the humanists
a half-million dollars to further attack Christianity. That’s evil. That’s the
spirit of the antichrist.

At the same time, in China the government has decreed that
crosses on the steeples of churches must be removed if they are higher than the
Chinese national flag. All over China, government workers are climbing onto
steeples and tearing down the cross. And furthermore, the government of China
has banned the livestreaming of worship services during the pandemic. That’s
the spirit of the antichrist in the world.

I could give you example after example, of course, but you
already know it. We are living in the last hour and the spirit of anti-Christ
is getting stronger in this world every day. And none of us knows what’s coming
next.

Few people started 2020 expecting a global virus to literally
shut down the planet. So what’s coming next?

Is there another virus with an even higher
mortality rate?What would happen if the world’s internet
collapsed?What would happen in America’s internet was
wiped out?What would happen if North Korea or Iran fired
an atomic weapon at Jerusalem?

These are the kinds of events that make us feel we’re living
close to the days of the book of Revelation. These are the beginnings of birth
pains. The world is having contractions, and they are accelerating. And that’s
pretty exciting for the believer because it means we’re getting closer and
closer to seeing Jesus. And one day soon, Jesus is going to come and take us
out of the way. And the antichrist is going to appear.

Conclusion

So let’s sum up.

John said I am writing to new Christians who have been freed
from their sins by the power of the name of Jesus. I am writing to growing
Christians who are abiding in the Word and overcoming the evil one. I am
writing to mature believers who have grown deep in the abiding sense of God’s
presence. And I want you to know that we’re living in the last hour. The
antichrist is coming, but the spirit of the antichrist is already in the world.

So what should we do? We must be accelerating in our walk
with Christ because the world is accelerating toward Judgment day.

So let me close with the middle portion of this Scripture,
the one we began with—verses 15-17:

Do not love the world
or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is
not in them. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh and the lust of
the eyes and the pride of life—is not from the Father, but from the world. And
the world and its lusts are passing away, but whoever does the will of God
abides forever.

[1] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/amazing-story-frank-barker-campus-outreach/

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Press Release: Live Stream Response to National Call to Prayer

Pastor Allen Jackson, Donelson Fellowship’s Pastor Rob Morgan Join Forces to Lead people across the nation in Exercising Faith over Fear



WHAT: 
In a unique response to the recommendations from health officials that large gatherings be cancelled, and President Trump’s call to make Sunday, March 15, a National Day of Prayer for the coronavirus pandemic, Pastor Allen Jackson of World Outreach Church, My Faith Votes and Pastor Rob Morgan of Donelson Fellowship are joining forces to lead a service called “America, Its Time to Pray.” This new National Day of Prayer emphasis follows World Outreach Church’s monthly day of prayer and fasting, held on the tenth of every month, for the state and the nation. Last October, Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee established a Day of Prayer for Tennessee, and part of World Outreach Church’s prayer has been that every state would follow suit. Now, with the call for national prayer issued by President Trump, the church is extending an invitation for congregations across the nation to join them, along with the My Faith Votes organization, in praying for faith over fear and God’s intervention in the spread of COVID-19.

WHO: 
Allen Jackson is senior pastor of World Outreach Church, a congregation of 15,000 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; he is also founder of Allen Jackson Ministries, through which his biblical messages have been broadcast nationally and internationally on multiple platforms. His latest book, “Intentional Faith” from Thomas Nelson, releases March 24.

Rob Morgan is teaching pastor at Donelson Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has served for 38 years.  He is a best-selling, gold-Illuminations, and gold-medallion winning writer with more than 35 books in print and more than 4.5 million copies in circulation in multiple languages.While researching his most recent book, “100 Bible Verses that Made America,” Pastor Morgan discovered much about the intersection of faith and our nation’s history. He will share many of these stories during his time with Pastor Jackson tomorrow. 

WHEN: 
World Outreach Church will hold a live streamed service this weekend, which will include live worship, at 10:30 a.m. CDT on Sunday, March 15 in response to the recommendations from health officials that large gatherings be cancelled, and President Trump’s call to make the day a National Day of Prayer for the coronavirus pandemic. It is this Sunday service where Pastor Jackson will not only speak on prayer but also interview Pastor Morgan, discussing specific biblical lessons that have impacted critical moments and influenced the American way of life.

WHERE: 
Services will be accessible online at World Outreach Church Livestream Website as well as:



Via ROKU on the World Outreach Church channel Via Apple TV on the World Outreach Church app Via phone or tablet using the World Outreach Church app (iOS or Android) Via the World Outreach Church Facebook page  Via the World Outreach Church YouTube channelVia “My Faith Votes” which will also livestream the 10:30 a.m. service nationwide.

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The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 4: Mary Washington (Transcript)

This article is based on the Robert J. Morgan podcast and has been partially edited for readability.

I want to introduce you to a fascinating woman whose simple life has sent historians into fits. Her name is Mary Bell Washington, and she became the mother of America’s first President. After her life, she had a rather complicated relationship with her son, George. After her death, she was admired as a hero and a woman who overcame tremendous obstacles to raise the nation’s Founding Father. In recent years, historians have decided she was a rather despicable woman and she is often presented in negative—and rather unfair—terms. After all, she did raise one of the greatest men of the ages.

Martha Saxton opens her recent biography of Mary with these words: Mary Ball Washington was orphaned early, grew up poor, and was later widowed with five children under the age of twelve to support. She did the best she knew for her family in the harsh world of the eighteenth-century Chesapeake. She poured her exceptional vitality, deep religious convictions, and unflagging persistence into her first son, George. We still admire him for the honorable way he used those qualities to create a country and a government. Why has she not received historians’ respect for her years of lonely and challenging work?”

Early Beginnings

Mary was born in the early 1700s in the Tidewater area of Virginia, and from the beginning, she suffered tremendous losses. Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother died when she was twelve. She was taken in by her half-sister, but she largely had to raise herself.

Mary didn’t have much emotional support as a teenager, but she did embrace the Anglican faith and learn the catechism. She begins to lean on the Lord for support.

Mary also became a skilled horse-rider and an expert dancer.

At the age of 22, she married Augustine Washington. She was described as “a strong, healthy young woman with light-colored hair, clear blue eyes, and a pleasant voice.” The couple made their home to the east of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Their firstborn son, George, was born on February 22, 1732. They moved closer to Fredericksburg and the couple had five more children, one of whom died in infancy. Augustine also died, and Mary was left a young widow to raise her children alone.

Now, there’s one thing we cannot gloss over. From the time she was three years old until her death, Mary owned slaves. So did George, of course, and Thomas Jefferson, and many of the other Founding Fathers who lived in the Mid-American states. It is frankly hard for me to understand how people—especially Christians—did not see the evil, the horror, the brutality, and the inhumanity of that. I can only understand it by comparing the similar blindness today’s society has toward the evils of abortion. Future generations will look back with horror at this, the way we look back with horror on slavery. Nothing excuses the degrading and discarding of human life, either through bondage or abortion. 

But Mary was a product of her times with a worldview that was blind to the inhumanity of slavery. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But it was part of the social fabric of the time.

And yet she was a tough and resilient woman who, as a single mother, raised five children. She was strong-willed. In 1746, George wanted to join the British Royal Navy, but Mary, who had already lost her mother, father, husband, and child, was horrified at the prospect. At her insistence, he gave up his plan. George later said that his mother so beseeched him that he had to retrieve his packed bags from aboard ship and give up his plans.

Historians have criticized Mary this, but how many mothers would allow their fourteen-year-old son to go off and join the British Navy? It couldn’t have been easy to be George Washington’s mother. He ended up engaged in death-defying military missions during the French and Indian War, and as his popularity grew, so did Mary’s anxiety.

The Christian Life

In 1771, Mary moved into a house George purchased for her in Fredericksburg. It was near her daughter, Betty, with whom she was exceedingly close. She had a beautiful garden, which is kept in her memory to this day. The house, which is open today to the public, sits on a corner lot with two parlors in the front and a dining room in the back that looked out onto the garden. Behind the garden was an orchard.

Nearby was a formation of rocks, and this is where Mary loved to go for private prayer. She loved her Bible and she constantly read a handful of rich and personal devotional books. When I use the phrase “devotional books,” don’t picture a short little book with nice devotional thoughts. These were virtual textbooks, each hundreds of pages long, printed in small type.

One was entitled The Christian Life, From Its Beginnings to Its Consummation in Glory by the English devotional writer, John Scott. The extant copy of this book in her library shows her name written in it in 1728 when she would have nineteen or twenty. Here is a sample from this book:

As for the end of the Christian life, we are assured from Scripture that it is no other but heaven itself, the state of endless bliss and happiness, which God has prepared in the world above for all those who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality. That this is the end of the Christian life is evident from hence, because it is everywhere proposed by our Savior and the Apostles as the Chief Good of the Christian and the supreme motive to all Christian virtue. For so St. John, that bosom-favorite of our Savior, assures us, this is the promise which Christ has promised us, even eternal life…. He that believes has life everlasting.

Pilgrims Upon Earth

He went on to say:

Now we are no longer to look upon this world as our native country but as a foreign land; and so we are to reckon ourselves strangers and pilgrims upon earth…”

He said, “It may be your lot to take up the cross and follow your Savior through a dark lane of suffering, and then you will need a world of patience and courage.”

He wrote, “The holiest service that we do is an honest calling, though it be but to plow or dig, if done in obedience and conscience of God’s command.”

Scott suggested having devotional times of prayer and biblical reflection both morning and evening, and one family remember recalled how Mary, even in her later years, worked hard to maintain her private times with the Lord.

Contemplations Moral and Divine

Her favorite devotional book was Contemplations Moral and Divine, by Matthew Hale. Her husband gave it to her, and she signed her name in it after her marriage. Hale acknowledges that life is full of trouble, that our great consolation is heaven, and that we should learn to remain cheerful even amid the burdens of life. 

Let me just give you a sentence out of this massive work: “As thus the knowledge of Christ Jesus and him crucified excels all other knowledge, and so in comparison thereof, all other knowledge, upon a right judgment, is as nothing, so the soul, being rightly convinced thereof, sets a higher price upon that knowledge than upon all other knowledge besides.”

The Bible and these devotional books were her library, and with these, she raised her children and taught her grandchildren. Matthew Hale’s book, Contemplations Moral and Divine was the primary text she used in raising her firstborn son, and he was prone to quote some of the lessons throughout the rest of his life.

When George later became the Commander in Chief of the American Revolutionary Army, she must have been proud of him, but she worried constantly about his safety. She saw little of him during the Revolution. At one point, the war drew dangerously close, and, since it would have been unthinkable for the mother of George Washington to be captured by the British, she had to flee with her family to the mountains. She was unwell, elderly, and she had to live in very difficult conditions—and she hadn’t see her son for years.

But Mary was always worried about having enough money to support her rather simple lifestyle, and George became exasperated with her requests for funds. He finally wrote her a little that seems to me to be unfortunate, insensitive, and downright rude. He told her she should move in with one of her children.

The Last Days of Mary Washington

Mary was also a plain woman, with little education. She lacked the social skills that Washington had acquired. He was hesitant to have her at Mount Vernon because he was afraid she’d been out of place.

She battled anxiety all her life. For example, from childhood, she had been deathly afraid of thunderstorms. Even during her last years, they produced acute anxiety. Once in old age, she was spending time in her daughter, Betty’s, house, and a thunderstorm blew in. Suddenly Betty realized her mother was missing. Betty found her upstairs kneeling in prayer. Getting up, she confessed that she had been “striving for years against this weakness, for you know, Betty, my trust is in God, but sometimes my fears are stronger than my faith.”

However, she lived just long enough to learn that her son had been chosen as the first President of the United States. He traveled to visit her, knowing she was ill. He received her blessing as he traveled on to New York City for the Inauguration. 

Her last days were more peaceful. Her biographer wrote, “Mary resumed gardening and reading and sometimes recreated the meditative state she achieved in thinking about God’s ways and his will, reciting a well-known passage from (her devotional books) and reading her family Bible to the grandchildren. She continued to visit her beloved large flat rocks, surrounded by trees, where, according to her step-grandson and others, she communed with her Creator in humiliation and prayer. One grandson…remembered her teaching lessons about natural history, finding illustrations in their surroundings. She would tie the natural world around them to the Bible story of creation…. Much later one grandchild spoke for the others when he said, “There was a spell over them as they looked into their grandmother’s uplifted face, with its sweet expression of perfect peace.”

She loved tea, and trained all her children to serve and drink tea in the afternoon. A pastime she also enjoyed with her grandchildren.

Leaving a Legacy

In 1789, Mary was found to be dying of breast cancer. Having studied the Bible and her devotional books for sixty years, she seemed unworried, even eager to go. In August 1789, she stopped speaking and lapsed into a comma. She died 1789 at about 80 years old.

Shortly after her death, the United States Congress passed a resolution to build a monument to her memory. President Andrew Jackson came to lay the cornerstone. But it was never completed and for sixty years it lay in a state of dilapidation. Finally, the scattered pieces were hauled off and a cornerstone for a new monument was laid in 1894. It was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland. It stands today—almost a miniature model of Washington’s Monument in DC. It’s called the only monument in the United States erected to a woman by women—by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

A recent biographer, Martha Saxton, wrote, “Her piety gave her certainty, and as she grew older she also grew in gravity, rooted in her religious convictions.

The post The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 4: Mary Washington (Transcript) appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 4: The Great Awakening (Transcript)

This article is based on the Robert J. Morgan podcast and has been partially edited for readability.

I want to introduce you to a fascinating woman whose simple life has sent historians into fits. Her name is Mary Bell Washington, and she became the mother of America’s first President. After her life, she had a rather complicated relationship with her son, George. After her death, she was admired as a hero and a woman who overcame tremendous obstacles to raise the nation’s Founding Father. In recent years, historians have decided she was a rather despicable woman and she is often presented in negative—and rather unfair—terms. After all, she did raise one of the greatest men of the ages.

Martha Saxton opens her recent biography of Mary with these words: Mary Ball Washington was orphaned early, grew up poor, and was later widowed with five children under the age of twelve to support. She did the best she knew for her family in the harsh world of the eighteenth-century Chesapeake. She poured her exceptional vitality, deep religious convictions, and unflagging persistence into her first son, George. We still admire him for the honorable way he used those qualities to create a country and a government. Why has she not received historians’ respect for her years of lonely and challenging work?”

Early Beginnings

Mary was born in the early 1700s in the Tidewater area of Virginia, and from the beginning, she suffered tremendous losses. Her father died when she was an infant, and her mother died when she was twelve. She was taken in by her half-sister, but she largely had to raise herself.

Mary didn’t have much emotional support as a teenager, but she did embrace the Anglican faith and learn the catechism. She begins to lean on the Lord for support.

Mary also became a skilled horse-rider and an expert dancer.

At the age of 22, she married Augustine Washington. She was described as “a strong, healthy young woman with light-colored hair, clear blue eyes, and a pleasant voice.” The couple made their home to the east of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Their firstborn son, George, was born on February 22, 1732. They moved closer to Fredericksburg and the couple had five more children, one of whom died in infancy. Augustine also died, and Mary was left a young widow to raise her children alone.

Now, there’s one thing we cannot gloss over. From the time she was three years old until her death, Mary owned slaves. So did George, of course, and Thomas Jefferson, and many of the other Founding Fathers who lived in the Mid-American states. It is frankly hard for me to understand how people—especially Christians—did not see the evil, the horror, the brutality, and the inhumanity of that. I can only understand it by comparing the similar blindness today’s society has toward the evils of abortion. Future generations will look back with horror at this, the way we look back with horror on slavery. Nothing excuses the degrading and discarding of human life, either through bondage or abortion. 

But Mary was a product of her times with a worldview that was blind to the inhumanity of slavery. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. But it was part of the social fabric of the time.

And yet she was a tough and resilient woman who, as a single mother, raised five children. She was strong-willed. In 1746, George wanted to join the British Royal Navy, but Mary, who had already lost her mother, father, husband, and child, was horrified at the prospect. At her insistence, he gave up his plan. George later said that his mother so beseeched him that he had to retrieve his packed bags from aboard ship and give up his plans.

Historians have criticized Mary this, but how many mothers would allow their fourteen-year-old son to go off and join the British Navy? It couldn’t have been easy to be George Washington’s mother. He ended up engaged in death-defying military missions during the French and Indian War, and as his popularity grew, so did Mary’s anxiety.

The Christian Life

In 1771, Mary moved into a house George purchased for her in Fredericksburg. It was near her daughter, Betty, with whom she was exceedingly close. She had a beautiful garden, which is kept in her memory to this day. The house, which is open today to the public, sits on a corner lot with two parlors in the front and a dining room in the back that looked out onto the garden. Behind the garden was an orchard.

Nearby was a formation of rocks, and this is where Mary loved to go for private prayer. She loved her Bible and she constantly read a handful of rich and personal devotional books. When I use the phrase “devotional books,” don’t picture a short little book with nice devotional thoughts. These were virtual textbooks, each hundreds of pages long, printed in small type.

One was entitled The Christian Life, From Its Beginnings to Its Consummation in Glory by the English devotional writer, John Scott. The extant copy of this book in her library shows her name written in it in 1728 when she would have nineteen or twenty. Here is a sample from this book:

As for the end of the Christian life, we are assured from Scripture that it is no other but heaven itself, the state of endless bliss and happiness, which God has prepared in the world above for all those who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality. That this is the end of the Christian life is evident from hence, because it is everywhere proposed by our Savior and the Apostles as the Chief Good of the Christian and the supreme motive to all Christian virtue. For so St. John, that bosom-favorite of our Savior, assures us, this is the promise which Christ has promised us, even eternal life…. He that believes has life everlasting.

Pilgrims Upon Earth

He went on to say:

Now we are no longer to look upon this world as our native country but as a foreign land; and so we are to reckon ourselves strangers and pilgrims upon earth…”

He said, “It may be your lot to take up the cross and follow your Savior through a dark lane of suffering, and then you will need a world of patience and courage.”

He wrote, “The holiest service that we do is an honest calling, though it be but to plow or dig, if done in obedience and conscience of God’s command.”

Scott suggested having devotional times of prayer and biblical reflection both morning and evening, and one family remember recalled how Mary, even in her later years, worked hard to maintain her private times with the Lord.

Contemplations Moral and Divine

Her favorite devotional book was Contemplations Moral and Divine, by Matthew Hale. Her husband gave it to her, and she signed her name in it after her marriage. Hale acknowledges that life is full of trouble, that our great consolation is heaven, and that we should learn to remain cheerful even amid the burdens of life. 

Let me just give you a sentence out of this massive work: “As thus the knowledge of Christ Jesus and him crucified excels all other knowledge, and so in comparison thereof, all other knowledge, upon a right judgment, is as nothing, so the soul, being rightly convinced thereof, sets a higher price upon that knowledge than upon all other knowledge besides.”

The Bible and these devotional books were her library, and with these, she raised her children and taught her grandchildren. Matthew Hale’s book, Contemplations Moral and Divine was the primary text she used in raising her firstborn son, and he was prone to quote some of the lessons throughout the rest of his life.

When George later became the Commander in Chief of the American Revolutionary Army, she must have been proud of him, but she worried constantly about his safety. She saw little of him during the Revolution. At one point, the war drew dangerously close, and, since it would have been unthinkable for the mother of George Washington to be captured by the British, she had to flee with her family to the mountains. She was unwell, elderly, and she had to live in very difficult conditions—and she hadn’t see her son for years.

But Mary was always worried about having enough money to support her rather simple lifestyle, and George became exasperated with her requests for funds. He finally wrote her a little that seems to me to be unfortunate, insensitive, and downright rude. He told her she should move in with one of her children.

The Last Days of Mary Washington

Mary was also a plain woman, with little education. She lacked the social skills that Washington had acquired. He was hesitant to have her at Mount Vernon because he was afraid she’d been out of place.

She battled anxiety all her life. For example, from childhood, she had been deathly afraid of thunderstorms. Even during her last years, they produced acute anxiety. Once in old age, she was spending time in her daughter, Betty’s, house, and a thunderstorm blew in. Suddenly Betty realized her mother was missing. Betty found her upstairs kneeling in prayer. Getting up, she confessed that she had been “striving for years against this weakness, for you know, Betty, my trust is in God, but sometimes my fears are stronger than my faith.”

However, she lived just long enough to learn that her son had been chosen as the first President of the United States. He traveled to visit her, knowing she was ill. He received her blessing as he traveled on to New York City for the Inauguration. 

Her last days were more peaceful. Her biographer wrote, “Mary resumed gardening and reading and sometimes recreated the meditative state she achieved in thinking about God’s ways and his will, reciting a well-known passage from (her devotional books) and reading her family Bible to the grandchildren. She continued to visit her beloved large flat rocks, surrounded by trees, where, according to her step-grandson and others, she communed with her Creator in humiliation and prayer. One grandson…remembered her teaching lessons about natural history, finding illustrations in their surroundings. She would tie the natural world around them to the Bible story of creation…. Much later one grandchild spoke for the others when he said, “There was a spell over them as they looked into their grandmother’s uplifted face, with its sweet expression of perfect peace.”

She loved tea, and trained all her children to serve and drink tea in the afternoon. A pastime she also enjoyed with her grandchildren.

Leaving a Legacy

In 1789, Mary was found to be dying of breast cancer. Having studied the Bible and her devotional books for sixty years, she seemed unworried, even eager to go. In August 1789, she stopped speaking and lapsed into a comma. She died 1789 at about 80 years old.

Shortly after her death, the United States Congress passed a resolution to build a monument to her memory. President Andrew Jackson came to lay the cornerstone. But it was never completed and for sixty years it lay in a state of dilapidation. Finally, the scattered pieces were hauled off and a cornerstone for a new monument was laid in 1894. It was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland. It stands today—almost a miniature model of Washington’s Monument in DC. It’s called the only monument in the United States erected to a woman by women—by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

A recent biographer, Martha Saxton, wrote, “Her piety gave her certainty, and as she grew older she also grew in gravity, rooted in her religious convictions.

The post The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 4: The Great Awakening (Transcript) appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 3: The Great Awakening (Transcript)

The Great Awakening

Hello, this is Robert J. Morgan talking about my book 100 Bible Verses That Made America. Trying to explain American history without its Bible is like the city of Washington without the monuments. Had there been no Bible, there would be no America as we know it. Many revisionist historians are trying to erase the Bible’s influence on American history, but no eraser on earth can truly do that. The story is too deeply embedded and too amazingly wonderful.

A Spiritual Revival

During the 1700s, Christianity in the American Colonies and throughout Europe was threatened by the rising tide of skepticism, French rationalism, and the so-called Age of Reason. In many churches, the fire of enthusiasm went out, and congregations were simply going through the motions of their faith as attendance dropped and fervor waned. Just when the work of the Kingdom was a low eb in America, Britain, and Germany, a series of incredible revivals swept over the land. The Holy Spirit moved to revive His church and His work in the midst of the years. On the British Isles, it was the Wesleyan Revival, because its most prominent leaders were the brothers John and Charles Wesley. And throughout the American Colonies, the revival became known as the Great Awakening.

Before it spread into a prairie fire that swept over all the colonies, the Great Awakening began with some hotspots—local revivals here and there. The first were seen in New Jersey under the preaching of a man named Theodore Jacobus Frelinghuysen.

Another key figure was Rev. William Tennent, Sr., came to America from Ireland in 1716, and settled near Philadelphia. He purchased a hundred acres of land and built a log school for the training of pastors. The students, which included his sons, studied by day and took up lodging in the neighborhood at night. Tennent’s wife, Catherine, cared for the boys like sons. This rough building became the first Presbyterian seminary in America and the log cabin became a bonfire for the Great Awakening.

Speaking Softly and Simply

A third man was Jonathan Edwards, who was the pastor of a church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards was a brilliant man—today’s he’s recognized as the premier Christian theologian in American history—and even as a child he was fluent in English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. His church and the area around it showed signs of great revival in the 1730s. His best-known moment came on Sunday, July 8, 1741, while ministering in tiny Enfield, Connecticut.  A group of women had spent the previous night praying for revival.  When Edwards rose to speak, he quietly announced that his text was Deuteronomy 32:35, “…their foot shall slide in due time.”  This “hellfire and brimstone” approach was somewhat a departure for Edwards. Of his 1000 written sermons, less than a dozen are of this type. 

Edwards neither gestured nor raised his voice.  He spoke softly and simply, warning the unconverted that they were dangling over hell like a spider over the fire. O sinner!  consider the fearful danger.  The unconverted are now walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that it will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.

Edwards’ voice was suddenly lost amid cries and commotion from the crowd.  He paused, appealing for calm. Then he concluded:  Let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come.  The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation.  Let every one fly out of Sodom.

Strong men held to pews and posts, feeling they were sliding into hell.  Others shook uncontrollably and rolled on the floor. Throughout the night cries of men and women were heard throughout the village, begging God to save them.  500 were converted that evening, sparking a revival that swept thousands into the kingdom.  

But these three men—Frelinghuysen, Tennant, and Edwards—didn’t become the best-known figure of the Great Awakening. That distinction goes to a British preacher named George Whitefield.

America’s Spiritual Founding Father

George Whitefield became a Christian while attending Oxford in 1735.  He became part of the Wesleyan Revival on the British Isles, but he made repeated trips to the Colonies and became a sensation. Whitefield’s sermons were electric.  His vivid imagination, prodigious memory, powerful voice, and ardent sincerity mesmerized listeners. He could be heard a mile away, and his voice was so rich that British actor David Garrick said, “I would give 100 guineas if I could say ‘O’ like Mr. Whitefield.”

Whitefield, a young man in his early 20s, toured the American colonies, sparking the Great Awakening and bringing multitudes to Christ. His sermon in Boston drew the largest crowd that had ever gathered in America — 23,000 people, more than Boston’s entire population.  During his lifetime he preached over 18,000 times to millions of listeners, and he has been called the greatest evangelist in history, save for Paul.

He set the Colonies on fire. Eighty percent of the population of America heard him, usually in the open air. His crowds numbered thousands and his voice was commanding, though he had only the air for amplification. He was America’s first celebrity, the most famous person in the Colonies before George Washington, and he has been called “American’s Spiritual Founding Father.”

Whitefield’s 1739-1740 tour of the Colonies began in Philadelphia and coincided with the high tide of the Great Awakening. He generated audiences like none had ever seen before—often exceeding the population of the cities he visited, and a spirit of revival radiated from his ministry for miles in all directions.

Nathan Cole, a farmer in Connecticut, described Whitefield’s visit to his area on October 23, 1740.

The Rumble of Horses

(I heard) of his preaching at Philadelphia, like one of the old apostles, and many thousands flocking after him to hear the Gospel; and great numbers were converted to Christ; I felt the Spirit of God drawing me by conviction; I longed to see and hear him and wished he would come this way…. 

Then one morning all on a sudden about 8 or 9 o’clock, there came a messenger and said Mr. Whitefield…is to preach at Middletown this at 10 o’clock. I was in my field at work. I dropped my tool…and ran home and ran through my house and bid my wife get ready quick and to go and hear Mr. Whitefield…. I ran to my pasture for my horse with all my might fearing I should be too late to hear him. I brought my horse and soon mounted and took my wife up and went forward as fast as I thought the horse could bear; and when my horse would begin to be out of breath, I would get down and put my wife on the saddle and bid her ride as fast as she could…and so I would run until I was out of breath… as if we were fleeing for our lives, all the while fearing we should be too late to hear the sermon; for we had twelve miles to ride…. 

And when we came within about half a mile of the road that comes down from Hartford…I saw before me a cloud or fog rising…. I heard a noise something like a low rumbling thunder and presently found it was the rumbling of horses coming down the road… a steady stream of horses and their riders…all of a lather and foam and sweat…. Every horse seemed to go with all his might to carry his rider to hear news from heaven for the saving of their souls. It made me tremble…. 

My wife said, “Law, our clothes will be all spoiled; see how they look,” for they were so covered with dust… There was a great multitude it was said to be 3 or 4000 people assembled together; we got from our horses and shook off our dust… I turned and looked toward the Great River and saw the ferry boats running swift forward and backward, bringing over loads of people… The land and banks over the river looked black with people and horses…. 

Authority From A Great God

When I saw Mr. Whitefield come upon the (platform), he looked almost angelical—a young, slim, slender youth before some thousands of people and with a bold, undaunted countenance, and my hearing how God was with him everywhere as he came along, it solemnized my mind and put me into a trembling fear before he began to preach; for he looked as if he was clothed with authority from the great God… 

The sermon resulted in Nathan Cole’s conversion, and in the conversion of hundreds of others. 

George Whitefield’s repeated visits to America between 1738 and1770 led thousands to Christ. The Great Awakening united the Colonies in a way that transcended regional differences, infused the land with spiritual liberty, populated their pulpits with clergymen proclaiming freedom, and laid a moral foundation for the American Revolution. Modern historians don’t admit it, but, as one of them said: “The success of the First great Awakening was nothing less than an American declaration of intellectual independence from Europe that made the American Revolution not only possible, but also inevitable.”

The preachers spawned by the Great Awakening later became the preachers of the Gospel of liberty, and John Adams said: “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.”

The post The Robert J. Morgan Podcast | Episode 3: The Great Awakening (Transcript) appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.