"HOW SHALL WE THEN LIVE?" Francis Schaeffer

Friday, May 06, 2005

Found on Town Hall by Marvin Olasky

Read what a largely forgotten scholar, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), said at Hampden-Sydney College on June 9, 1929.

Machen was a strong and courageous Christian. In 1929, he had for 23 years taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, a beautiful place that had just been taken over by theological liberals. He had suffered personal attacks in a decade-long seminary war now lost, but had held firm. He would return to Princeton from his graduation address in Virginia only to pack up and move to Philadelphia to start Westminster Theological Seminary.

Calmly but sadly, he began his Hampden-Sydney talk by noting that: "It is a serious step, in these days, even from the worldly point of view, to become a Christian. ... The man who today enters upon the Christian life is enlisting in a warfare against the whole current of the age."

He said that the conflict "can be avoided if the one who professes Christianity adapts his message to the desires of those who are about him. ... Such a Christianity ... causes no more disturbance than is caused to a stream by a chip that floats downward with the current. But very different is the case if the Christian proclaims without fear or favor the gospel that is contained in the Word of God."

JB here: J. Gresham Machen, a stupendous scholar; a great man was actually defrocked by the United Presbyterian Church due to his refusual to water down the ancient Scriptures and join the progressive/modern flow towards a more liberal church. He seemed to think the church would become irrelevant and die. The "mainline" Protestant Churches of our generation are a testament to his insight and wisdom. Does anybody attend anymore? Does anybody care.

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