-126-

MAY

24, 1692 --France. This is the sixth day of the Battle of La Hogue. Louis XIV, king of France, and a Roman Catholic, has organized an army of thirty thousand men on the tip of Normandy in an attempt to restore the Catholic king of England to the throne. James II has been ousted by his countrymen, and has himself come to witness the embarkation, but the Dutch-English fleet under Admiral Edward Russell will bring crushing defeat to the expedition.

24, 1707 --England. In London, Thomas Doolittle dies. As a boy he was converted under the preaching of Richard Baxter. In 1666, when the great fire broke out here, Mr. Doolittle was one of the Non-conformists to defy the law and to build places of worship amidst the ruins. When he was warned to desist from preaching, he continued his calling. His meeting-house was seized and he fled. He leaves behind him his Call to Delaying Sinners, a Complete Body of Practical Divinity, and A Treatise Concerning the Lord’s Supper.

24, 1758 --England. John Wesley is converted upon hearing a portion of Luther’s Commentary on Romans read in a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street. He testifies to the same and of his faith in Christ. Coming to his brother, Charles, he cries, “I believe” and both sing the newly written hymn, “And Can It Be that I Should Gain An Interest In the Saviour’s Blood?” After prayer, they part.
     He will align himself with the Moravian Society in Fetter Lane, but in 1739, a rupture with the Moravians in London will occur when they fall into heresies especially that of Quietism. Therefore in that year, he will form a separate society. “Thus,” he will write, “without any previous plan, began the Methodist Society in England.”

24, 1809 --Pennsylvania. At Philadelphia, the Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of America is constituted.

24, 1824 --Scotland. John Gibson Paten is born. He will become a Presbyterian missionary to the New Hebrides, being ordained on March 23, 1858. He will leave Glasgow with his wife, Mary Ann Robson on April 16th the same year.

24, 1844 --Washington, D. C. Samuel Morse has been much in prayer that the bill before the Senate in 1843 to finance an inter-city telegraph system will pass. When the last day of the session arrives, one hundred forty bills wait to be enacted before his. When no word comes by evening, Mr. Morse returns to his hotel room for devotions before retiring.
     At breakfast the following day, he has been told of a visitor waiting to see him in the hotel parlor. It proves to be Annie Ellsworth the daughter of the Commissioner of Patents. She has brought news his bill passed about midnight without any discussion, and was signed by President Tyler.
     Mr. Morse was shocked. He had promised that when the lines were completed between Baltimore and Washington, Annie would be given the opportunity to choose the text for the message. Today, she chooses the words from Numbers 23:23, --“What hath God wrought!” These will be the first words uttered by the Telegraph.

24, 1878 --New York. Near the city of Buffalo, Harry Emerson Fosdick is born. Early in life, he will develop fear at the thought of torment in Hell, but will nevertheless rebel against Christian standards of separation concerning card playing, dancing and theater going. He will become the most popular liberal in the theological world in the United States in his day.
     As a young man he will attend Colgate College where he will accept the theory of Evolution and will come to doubt the reliability of the Bible. When he enters Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, he will be strongly influenced by William Newton Clarke the leading liberal scholar of the day, and will dismiss much of Hebrew history as simply folklore. He will also be critical of the doctrine of the Trinity. Nevertheless, in the next fifty years he will receive seventeen honorary degrees.
     In 1903, he will be ordained a Baptist, but finding the Social Gospel much to his liking, he will decide against expository preaching believing people are not interested in the meaning of Bible texts.
     In 1922, he will preach a sermon entitled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” His answer will be that churches should include both those of strict Biblical belief as well as those of liberal persuasion. The sermon will urge toleration and will charge Fundamentalists with a cantankerous and unloving spirit. It will accuse them of being opposed to science, to modern culture, and to all who do not interpret Scripture as they do.
     Mr. Fosdick will impugn the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Inerrancy of the Scripture, as well as the literal interpretation of the Word of God. He will reject the Second Coming of Christ. He will state, “I do not believe in the Virgin Birth or in that old-fashioned doctrine of the Atonement and I do not know of any intelligent person who does.”
     On another occasion he will write, “The Substitutionary Atonement where one suffers in the place of others ... is in the view of modern ideas of justice an immoral outrage.”
     Mr. Clarence E. Macartney of Philadelphia, moderator of the Presbyterian Church and a prominent leader of Orthodoxy will affirm Mr. Fosdick denies the very basic foundational truths of Presbyterianism and that he is doing it in a Presbyterian Church. Mr. Macartney’s presbytery in Philadelphia will make the proper request to the New York Presbytery and to the General Assembly. The latter will direct the New York Presbytery to correct the situation. The presbytery will not admit to any error in Mr. Fosdick’s action, even though historic Presbyterianism has stressed five main doctrines: the Miracles in the Scriptures, the Virgin Birth of Christ, the Inerrancy of the Word of God, the Substitutionary Death of Christ, and the Bodily Resurrection of our Lord; and Mr. Fosdick denies these “Famous Five” doctrines while occupying a Presbyterian pulpit. Mr. Fosdick’s presbytery and congregation will be too weak-kneed to alter the situation. In fact, the church will stand behind its “Pastor.” Is it possible for a “Christian” church to rally behind a man who denies everything in “Christian” doctrine?
      In October 1924, Mr. Fosdick will resign from the First Presbyterian Church effective on May 25, 1925, and will accuse the General Assembly of a “Closed Shop.” However, Mr. J. Gresham Machen will write that Mr. Fosdick’s resignation, “...like all his utterance, is the expression of a thorough-going skepticism! ...He rejects all doctrine . . .. The truth is that two mutually exclusive religions are struggling for the control of the Presbyterian Church ...One is Christianity with its appeal to facts: the other is the naturalistic or agnostic modernism which is represented by Dr. Fosdick and hundreds of ministers in the Presbyterian Church. The separation of the two is demanded not only by the interests of the Christian faith but by simple honesty.”
     From 1925 to 1950, Mr. Fosdick will serve the Park Avenue Baptist Church, a Northern Baptist Church, and the church where Mr. John D. Rockefeller attends. Mr. Rockefeller will support the call to Mr. Fosdick if he will agree to drop baptism by immersion as a requirement for membership.”
      It is certainly no wonder that Mr. John R. Straton, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City, referred to Mr. Fosdick as “The Baptist bootlegger ...a Presbyterian out-law ...the Jesse James of the theological world.”

 

Previous   Next