Well here we are again.....Saturday evening.....and pastors across our nation.....most of them anyway.....hopefully....are finishing up their sermons for tomorrow. Will God have mercy on us this Lord's Day....and awaken these pastors from their slumber....and give them an unction once again?
The term 'fundamentalist' was coined about a hundred years ago. Modernism was sweeping not only America but the church. The gospel was being diluted beyond recognition. The more simple version of Christianity in America.....those who weren't as smart as everyone else....stood up to protest....and were laughed at....and derisively called 'fundamentalists' because they chose to stand and defend what they determined to be the 'fundamentals'.....or some of the basics of the Christian faith....in the face of a more enlightened age.
One of us wasn't laughing.....possibly the strongest defender of Christianity in the period from 1920 to his death in 1937.....Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen. He stood side by side with the Fundamentalists....surely an odd pairing. H. L. Mencken was a literary giant.....respected greatly at the time....although probably not now that more is known of him. He was like the Christopher Hitchens of his day. He looked at Machen's intellectual arguments against the modernists and insinuated that he blew them away.
What am I.....I'm Reformed in my faith.....Calvinist certainly.....while the church is mostly split between the evangelical and the fundamentalists. We are all one.....if we are true to what our creeds or beliefs profess. The Fundamentalists though have had the last laugh. Too many of us.....most of us actually....have lost the unction of saving souls. The words are there....even the actions.....but not really the heart. I cannot look at anyone.....anyone that I have at least an idea of their religious leanings....without automatically placing on that grid their eternal soul. What else can be more important?
I may not show it. You cannot show it all the time.....and with some people you cannot show it at all.....but it's there. I cannot think of a relative or a close friend without having their eternal destiny hovering overhead somewhere. I believe that would be called an unction. What I do with that would be another story.....I may utterly fail.....but it is there nonetheless.
So as the seconds tick away to tomorrow's 'worship' services all over America...my prayer is that God might blow on those embers.....relight the dry wood if necessary of what once was....that there would be a flame.....a fundamentalist flame if need be....where we don't have to show how smart we are.....but how concerned we are over lost souls.
The term 'fundamentalist' was coined about a hundred years ago. Modernism was sweeping not only America but the church. The gospel was being diluted beyond recognition. The more simple version of Christianity in America.....those who weren't as smart as everyone else....stood up to protest....and were laughed at....and derisively called 'fundamentalists' because they chose to stand and defend what they determined to be the 'fundamentals'.....or some of the basics of the Christian faith....in the face of a more enlightened age.
One of us wasn't laughing.....possibly the strongest defender of Christianity in the period from 1920 to his death in 1937.....Presbyterian scholar J. Gresham Machen. He stood side by side with the Fundamentalists....surely an odd pairing. H. L. Mencken was a literary giant.....respected greatly at the time....although probably not now that more is known of him. He was like the Christopher Hitchens of his day. He looked at Machen's intellectual arguments against the modernists and insinuated that he blew them away.
What am I.....I'm Reformed in my faith.....Calvinist certainly.....while the church is mostly split between the evangelical and the fundamentalists. We are all one.....if we are true to what our creeds or beliefs profess. The Fundamentalists though have had the last laugh. Too many of us.....most of us actually....have lost the unction of saving souls. The words are there....even the actions.....but not really the heart. I cannot look at anyone.....anyone that I have at least an idea of their religious leanings....without automatically placing on that grid their eternal soul. What else can be more important?
I may not show it. You cannot show it all the time.....and with some people you cannot show it at all.....but it's there. I cannot think of a relative or a close friend without having their eternal destiny hovering overhead somewhere. I believe that would be called an unction. What I do with that would be another story.....I may utterly fail.....but it is there nonetheless.
So as the seconds tick away to tomorrow's 'worship' services all over America...my prayer is that God might blow on those embers.....relight the dry wood if necessary of what once was....that there would be a flame.....a fundamentalist flame if need be....where we don't have to show how smart we are.....but how concerned we are over lost souls.
