I know that we have visitors with us.
As Dr. Barrett has said, we're glad to
have you.
But if the singing of Psalms is something
new to you, I hope that you get
a taste for it.
We're not a Psalms-only church.
I don't think that that is something that
is really establishable from Scripture, although it's an
ongoing debate.
But nonetheless, the Psalms have a wonderful place
in the worship of the Church of Jesus
Christ.
And I love to hear them sung with
heart as well as with reverence.
So I trust that you enjoyed the singing
of the 46th Psalm, at least of a
fair part of that Psalm.
Today is a special day for us here,
because courtesy of Stephen Lee and Sermon Audio,
Stephen is our resident wizard.
Whatever can't be done, we get him to
do it.
But courtesy of Stephen, we are now able
to have live webcasting of the services here,
so that to start with, a limited number
of people are able to listen in anywhere
in the world.
Of course, if you're in many parts of
the world, you'd have to be very sleepless
to be listening in at the moment.
But they can listen in and participate with
us.
Pray about this, because I trust it will
be a blessing to many.
I do appreciate all the effort Stephen has
put in to making it come to pass.
I have no idea what he has to
do to do this.
All I know is it's difficult, but he's
managed to do it.
And we really do appreciate all the effort
that he's put in, not only in this,
but in every other part of our ministry
over the internet.
And I do get feedback from that.
This week I'll be replying, God willing, to,
in many ways, what's a heart-wrenching email
from the other side of the world of
a man who's lost his family and lost
his home because they have been caught up
in one of these fancy, American-based, mega
-church-growth outfits.
And his family, because of that, are so
wrapped up in it, they cannot stand anything
that would savor the historic Protestant faith.
And he's seeking to win them, seeking to
win others.
But he wrote to tell me that he's
a caregiver for terminal cancer patients.
He uses the downloads of the messages that
I preach here in Greenville.
He said, I just wanted you to know
of two souls who have come to Christ
through your preaching.
And one of them, after proving her testimony,
went on to be with Christ.
And the other is facing great difficulty, but
day by day, feasting on the Word of
God and rejoicing in what the Lord has
done.
We hear of others, so I say I
appreciate all that Stephen's doing to get this
out.
Pray that the Lord will bless it, and
that there will be people out there who
have nowhere to go, no church to attend,
no hope of really ever being in a
live service.
And perhaps this will be some way the
Lord can sanctify the Lord's day for them
in a special way.
So do pray about this new webcast.
And perhaps Dr. Barrett will keep it in
mind and sort of be civilized to his
minister when he gets up here to make
the announcements.
Doesn't say that I'm going to be civilized
in return, but you never know.
There's always an excuse for an Irishman.
You heard about today, all you men, you
heard it, you've got to turn in your
name and your money today for the men's
retreat.
I was glad to hear that announcement that
if it catches you at a bad time,
you see Mr. Brame, he's the rich man
around here.
So I'm seeing you now, David, I'm going,
but I'd like my cheque back.
I'd enjoy the retreat all the more if
you were paying for it.
But we do trust that the men will
be there.
All you married men, no doubt, will have
to have permission.
But make sure you get it before the
service is over tonight.
You don't have to be married to be
there.
Some of you younger fellows may turn up
and find that the old fellows can show
you a thing or two and whatever they're
going to do up there, they can beat
you at it.
If they can't, at least they can imagine
it.
So we trust you'll be there.
Remember to sign up tonight, young and old,
and let's make this first men's retreat a
great time together as we welcome Reverend Frank
McClellan from our Toronto church as our guest
speaker on that occasion, the end of this
month.
And do remember the final Wednesday evening of
this month, Dr. Pinozian will be with us
to do one of his first person presentations
coming as a Protestant reformer.
And we're looking forward to having Dr. Pinozian
yet again this year as our guest.
And I know that you will be blessed.
If you've never been here for one of
these, then you need to come.
It certainly is a wonderful time, not only
of learning history, but of getting an insight
into the hearts and the ministries that have
shaped our modern world.
Now tonight we're turning to read a few
verses in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 2.
We're reading the first eight verses of the
chapter, but our text will be taken from
the book of Proverbs.
So Jeremiah, chapter 2, reading verses 1 through
8, and then turning back to Proverbs 21,
verse 31 for the words of our text.
Moreover, the word of the Lord came to
me, saying, Go and cry in the ears
of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I
remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the
love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after
me in the wilderness, in a land that
was not sown.
Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the
firstfruits of his increase.
All that devour him shall offend, evil shall
come upon them, saith the Lord.
Hear ye the word of the Lord, O
house of Jacob, and all the families of
the house of Israel.
Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your
fathers found in me, that they are gone
far from me, and have walked after vanity,
and are become vain?
Neither said they, Where is the Lord that
brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through
a land of deserts and of pits, through
a land of drought and of the shadow
of death, through a land that no man
passed through, and where no man dwelt?
And I brought you into a plentiful country,
to eat the fruit thereof, and the goodness
thereof.
But when ye entered, ye defiled my land,
and made mine heritage an abomination.
The priests said not, Where is the Lord?
And they that handled the law knew me
not.
The pastors also transgressed against me, and the
prophets prophesied by Beal, and walked after things
that do not profit.
Amen.
The Lord will add his blessing to the
reading of his precious word for his name's
sake.
As I said tonight, the words of the
text that I want to start from are
found in Proverbs 21, verse 31.
Proverbs 21, verse 31.
The horse is prepared against the day of
battle, but safety or victory is of the
Lord.
The horse is prepared against the day of
battle, but victory is of the Lord.
Solomon's message to the people of God in
this little verse is clear and simple, but
yet profound.
If you wanted to deal with it theologically,
which I am not going to try to
do tonight, here is a key to the
ongoing theological debate between the responsibility of man
and the absolute sovereignty of God.
The more you understand this text, the more
you will understand that far from one being
the enemy or the antithesis of the other,
they are necessarily the two sides of one
coin.
Believing in the sovereignty of God, which I
gladly do as a Protestant, as a Presbyterian,
but most of all as a Bible-believing
Christian, believing in the sovereignty of God does
not in any way, to any degree, lessen
the intensity of my commitment to a belief
in the responsibility of man for his actions.
That is a theological angle on the text
tonight.
But as I've said, it's not the theological,
more the historical, that I want us to
deal with this evening.
In stating this clear message from Scripture, Solomon
teaches us that God's people are provided with
the necessary instruments of war.
And they employ them diligently in the day
of battle.
But in the final analysis, they must trust
their God for the victory.
I want you to understand that.
God's people have to have the necessary instruments
of war.
And having them, they don't just admire them,
they employ them diligently in the day of
battle.
But as they do so, they trust in
Jehovah, who alone can, with the smile of
His approval, give them the victory.
Many, many centuries after Solomon, when he was
the leader of the fight for English freedom
over the tyranny of the Stuart monarchs, Oliver
Cromwell grasped this truth and he burned it
into the hearts of his armies.
Reportedly, Cromwell advised his followers, trust in
God and keep your powder dry.
Coming from one of England's greatest ever military
commanders, as well as one of her greatest
ever statesmen, and I'll say in passing, though
I'm not preaching on Cromwell, despite all the
revisionist history, one of England's greatest Christians, coming
from him, this is truth to lay hold
of.
Trust in God and keep your powder dry.
That is your gunpowder dry.
It's not talking about that stuff that helps
you smell nice.
Cromwell was a true son of the Protestant
Reformation.
What he spelled out to his men in
17th century England was the way that the
16th century European reformers conducted their business and
their lives.
Those reformers were men of faith.
Any treatment of their lives that does not
give that the preeminent place is a lying,
deceiving treatment.
And in saying that, I'm saying that much
of what modern historians have written about the
Protestant reformers is deliberately a work of deception.
They were preeminently men of faith.
They were, at times, men who had to
fight.
If I may refer to Cromwell again, he
described his typical Puritan or roundhead captain of
whom he was so proud like this.
He spoke of the plain, russet-coated captain.
And he said, he knows what he fights
for and loves what he knows.
I like that.
He knows what he fights for and loves
what he knows.
Now, I'm really tempted to preach on Cromwell.
I'm really tempted to get away from the
whole plan of the message tonight and deal
a little bit with the necessity of having
men like this.
Men in the pulpit who know what they're
standing for.
God save our churches from a bunch of
weak-kneed opportunists.
Give us men who know what they stand
for.
Who know why they're standing for it.
And who love the things they know.
I hope in the final weeks of this
Reformation month, to use some of the Reformers
to try to paint the character, the type
of person we need in the pulpit of
the church today.
And one thing that I would put in
right now, is to have men who not
only know a little bit because they have
been to seminary.
After all, you can train a dog to
do many things, and apparently he knows them.
But I want men, and this is the
vision and the burden of this church, men
who love what they know.
Who have hearts that are gripped by what
their head has grasped.
Men who are not living in the airy,
fairy, unreal world of academic titillation, but who
are taking the great truths of the Word
of God and applying them first to their
own hearts.
Men who are mightily moved when they read
this book.
Moved when they preach this book.
Who are preaching in a way as Martin
Lloyd-Jones described, whereby they are not merely
talking, they are not merely conveying information, they
are not merely using their brains or their
lips, but their heart, their soul, their being,
their body, everything is in it.
It's the kind of man we need.
I'll deal with that hopefully a little further.
I want to tell you the Protestant Reformers
knew what they believed.
They loved what they knew, and they were
willing to fight to defend it if the
occasion demanded.
In taking such a bold stand, these men
often displayed unimaginable courage, supported by the realization
that though they were ready to stand and
fight, their trust was in one who was
higher than they and mightier than all the
energy and all the exertion that they could
put forth.
Tonight I want us to get to know
those men who knew what they stood for
and loved what they knew, as we think
a little about fighting the good fight with
all our might in the assurance that the
battle is not ours but the Lord's, or
in Cromwell's phrase, let's learn from the Reformers
what it is to trust in God, but
keep our powder dry.
The horse is prepared against the day of
battle, but victory is of the Lord.
God's people always have to face the day
of battle.
God has prepared His war horses for such
a day.
But as they ride forth into the conflict,
they must remember that the outcome of the
battle, in the final analysis, depends upon the
intervention of God on behalf of His people.
That's the teaching of the text.
And as we consider it tonight, I will
highlight four things.
The warfare, it's the first thing.
There is a day of battle.
The warriors, the horses don't go into battle
on their own.
The warriors, the weapons and then the winning
of the war.
You'll understand that this could quite be long
enough for Dr. Barrett to get down to
preach in Columbia tonight and come back again
and still find us here.
But we'll do our best to cover the
ground.
The warfare, the day of battle.
That day is not restricted to a particular
place or a particular time.
Every generation of the people of God has
to face a day of battle.
We see this throughout history.
Time does not allow me to go into
it in detail.
But go back to the New Testament and
the early church.
There was a day of battle for the
early church.
They faced first the Jews who were riled
up against them.
Then they faced the Romans and all the
might of the empire.
Then they faced Judaizing Christians who were seeking
to compromise the whole Christian religion and move
it into a place of acceptance with Judaism.
Then they had to fight the pagans.
And if that were not enough, then they
had to do battle with the heretics who
came in first of all attacking the person
of Christ.
And then from that introducing a whole host
of satanic lies.
So the early church had its battles.
It has been popular, probably not all that
accurate.
Popular things rarely are all that accurate.
But it has been popular to say that
the first 300 years of the Christian church
were marked by 10 great persecutions.
Well, there were many persecutions.
I don't know that that covers the whole
story, the 10 persecutions.
There certainly was a price to pay before
the church of Christ had some kind of
safety and some kind of calm.
When you travel through a few centuries, you
come to the Waldensian church that had its
strongholds in the Alpine valleys.
But even there they were not safe from
predators and persecutors.
It's one of the most moving stories of
church history to see the courage, the tenacity
with which these men of the book took
their stand for God.
They were a threat to no one except
Satan and his kingdom as they took the
gospel around Europe as best they could.
They fought no one in a battle of
conquest.
They defended their lives and their hearths and
their homes and their families.
But they were certainly constantly hounded and persecuted.
John Wycliffe's followers in England, the Lollards, faced
constant, constant opposition.
And again, they posed no threat except the
threat that truth poses to error.
They were not a military-minded people.
They were called the poor priests, men who
renounced the world just to go out and
give out handwritten copies of the gospel to
poor people and tell them of the Lord
Jesus.
For that, they suffered endlessly.
In Bohemia, John Huss, the Hussites, the Bohemian
brethren were constantly held up to ridicule, hounded
out of their homes and their cities.
Huss was burned by the order of the
Council of Constance in one of the darkest
days, even by popish standards, one of the
darkest days of papal betrayal in the history
of Europe.
You come to the Reformation.
The Reformers faced the combined might of the
Pope and of the Holy Roman Emperor.
You think of this, that princes were either
for the Pope or the Emperor or sometimes
both.
You had princes and powers like France and
England that were willing to use the might
of the monarchy to crush the gospel of
Christ.
Luther lived most of his life under a
papal and imperial ban.
Doesn't sound very dangerous, but in his day,
it was like sticking a wanted poster, dead
or alive, and carrying it around like a
placard.
He lived under the ban.
Zwingli, the great Swiss champion of the Reformation,
died defending his canton on the field of
battle.
Calvin, as a young man, rising as a
brilliant preacher to the pastoring of believers in
Paris, was forced to flee Paris and then
forced to flee France to its everlasting loss.
The English Reformers were burned.
You go to Oxford to this day.
If ever you go to England, of course,
you should go to Oxford.
It's well worth visiting.
But as you go down the street by
the side of the Bodleian Library, there is
a mark in the middle of the ground.
The buses and the cars drive over it
thoughtlessly.
That's the spot.
The Protestant bishops were burned.
All around the corner, they have erected a
martyr's memorial.
And at least that was done, thank God
it was done before this present godless bunch
got into power in England.
Otherwise, there'd never have been a monument to
the Protestant Reformers who were burned.
What a price they paid.
Up in Scotland, Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart paid
with their lives.
John Knox became a galley slave for a
year and a half.
When you get over to Europe again, to
Sweden and Denmark and Holland, you find that
they all had their baptisms of blood.
For almost a century, indeed for more than
a century, Europe reeled under the cruel bondage
of religious wars.
It wasn't until 1648, in the Peace of
Westphalia, that there was a semblance of order
brought to an exhausted continent.
In Britain, the battle lasted even longer.
After a period of comparative calm, and the
word there is comparative, the Stuart monarchs, James
I, now there's a name to conjure with,
That's why I don't like calling the authorised
version of the Bible the King James Version.
I know that he called the Hampton Court
Conference, and it was that conference that set
up the committees to translate the Bible.
But I don't like the name of that
very learned king, very cultured king, but very
proud, arrogant, and probably sodomite king, in any
way to be associated with the Bible that
I hold in my hand.
That's just by the way.
Nothing to do with anything except that it
gets it off my chest.
But after a period of calm, the Stuart
monarchs set up their hatred of the Puritans,
following right along in the footsteps of Elizabeth.
Then they drove the country all the way
into civil war.
Cromwell, thankfully, deposed Charles I, led the foundation
for English parliamentary democracy, and a constitutional monarchy.
But he could only reign or rule for
a little while.
He refused to be king, he refused to
reign.
The man who refused to be king was
Oliver Cromwell.
He didn't want that position, but he, after
ruling a little while, he died, Charles came
back to the throne.
Do you know who it was who helped
him back more than any?
The Scottish Presbyterians.
Hard to believe the way some minds work.
But anyway, he got back, and he and
his brother who followed him, James II, launched
Britain and especially Scotland into years of bloodshed
and trouble.
In England, hundreds of preachers were thrown out
of their churches.
In fact, you can buy from the Banner
of Truth a book that's called Sermons of
the Great Ejection.
In 1662, hundreds of the best men in
England were kicked out of their pulpits.
They were prohibited from entering towns.
They were prohibited from coming, if my memory's
right, and I'm stretching back nearly 50 years
to a history class for this, five miles
from the town.
They were not permitted.
As if they had had the plague, all
they had was the Word of God.
Some were imprisoned.
John Bunyan, of course, is the outstanding example
there.
Many others had to go into exile.
In Scotland, it was even worse.
The Covenanters, the very Presbyterians who brought the
Stuarts back to the throne, got the worst
of their hatred.
The Covenanters were proscribed.
They were persecuted.
They were hunted, and they were murdered.
In desperation, they took up arms in self
-defense.
The 1680s were for them what are called
in British history the Killing Times, which were
not ended until 1689, William of Orange deposed
his father-in-law, James II, and Britain
got a constitution that gave freedom to her
people.
In our day, some believers still face such
awful persecution and opposition.
We tend to overlook this, but in the
last century, the 20th century, there were as
many martyrs for Christ across the world as
in any century, or almost any century.
In South America, in Russia, in China, in
Eastern Europe, and to this very day, in
parts of Central India and other parts of
India, getting worse all the time, but in
one particular part of Central India, there has
been institutionalized persecution of the people of God
for many long years.
Many have paid the price for their faith
in the shedding of their blood unto death.
Now, many of us, most of us, do
not have to face bodily persecution.
We may therefore be tempted to think that
the day of battle is something that we're
not in.
We don't have to face a day of
battle.
But we'd be absolutely wrong.
We are in the midst of the day
of battle.
It's a different kind of battle.
It's a different kind of opposition.
But it's real, and it's of immense importance
nonetheless.
This war is being fought in America tonight,
and it's being fought on many fronts.
On the religious front, there is the battle
with ecumenical apostasy.
This movement that is meant to disembowel Protestant
Christianity, to evacuate it of every truth that
is essential to the gospel, to make Protestantism
passe, and to unite it with an unreformed
Roman Catholic system.
An ecumenism that wants to extend its arms,
to bring into the one fold everything and
anything that in any way names the name
of Jesus Christ.
Ultimately, of course, under the aegis and authority
of the Roman Pontiff.
We're fighting ecumenism.
Let me tell you, that is a battle
that is ongoing.
It is to the shame of our churches,
whether they are Presbyterian, or Baptist, or whatever
you want to say.
It is to their shame that our people
hardly know what the ecumenical movement is.
Last year I publicly criticized the Presbyterian Church
in America, and I will repeat it.
They have lived since the year, I think
2000, under the shame of a General Assembly
decision that exonerated their college choir's participation during
a European tour in the Roman Catholic Mass.
And I wonder where are the men, where
are the people who have backbone enough in
that denomination to say, Enough is enough, and
we will not stay under the government of
an assembly that is so weak that it
will not do what Protestantism must do.
What our confessional standards state, what we sign
at ordination as Presbyterians, that the Mass is
most abominably injurious to the once for all
sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
We are fighting ecumenism.
You realize that in most fundamental churches, they
have never heard of the ecumenical movement.
They have never heard of it.
They know nothing about the World Council of
Churches.
They know nothing about the National Council of
Churches.
All they will fight against New Evangelicals.
And by the way, I certainly am in
favor of opposing the compromise of New Evangelicalism.
The trouble is that in our fundamental churches,
anybody who doesn't agree with me, label them
a New Evangelical and have a go at
them.
That's the way it goes.
I know fundamentalists that would fight with you
to the death, because you didn't believe in
a pre-tribulation rapture, for which they can't
find one single verse in all the Bible.
Now, a wee bit like Dr. Schofield, he
finds it between Revelation 3 and Revelation 4.
Between it.
In my Bible, the only thing there is
blank space.
Now, if you want to believe that, I'm
not going to be your enemy because you
believe it.
But I'm saying, isn't it crazy that we
will make enemies of people over some point
of eschatology, but we don't fight the real
enemy.
We don't even know he exists.
The ecumenists are the enemies of truth.
In the religious front, we're fighting liberalism still.
It comes in many guises.
It changes its theological name tag.
But liberalism is apostasy, the denial of the
Word of God.
We're fighting a battle for the very existence
of that book.
I don't mean for its existence absolutely, but
for its existence in our churches, on the
throne of authority where it has historically been
and where it rightly must be.
We have churches that are so busy telling
people that they have got to have a
new version as if this somehow or other
is un-understandable.
There's a good Irish word for you.
You cannot understand it.
Let me tell you, I have no difficulty.
I have no difficulty in people who need
to have archaic expressions modernized.
Let me tell you, behind the English text,
there's a Hebrew and a Greek text.
And I will make this statement that the
movement to the minority text of the Bible
will be the death of fundamental witness.
I'm not getting into that in any more
detail.
Mark my words, God has not preserved the
text of His Word in the overwhelming mass
of witnesses from ancient times.
He has not done it for a bunch
of theological eggheads to throw it all out
because they want to exercise their imagination on
better readings from a minority Egyptian text.
I don't believe it.
It will be the death of the historically
strong witness of fundamentalism.
I could go on there, did time permit.
We are fighting a battle ultimately against what's
called syncretism.
Syncretism is simply the bringing together not only
of so-called Christian denominations but of all
kinds of religions under one umbrella.
See, anything goes religious attitude of the day
in which we live.
And these forces are powerful and we are
at war with them.
When I say we, I trust I include
you.
I want to tell you the Free Presbyterian
Church is a church at war.
From our inception we have deliberately been a
battling church.
Where Jesus Christ has been attacked, we have
stood for Him.
We have been spat upon, imprisoned, cursed, misrepresented,
you name it.
It's happened.
So be it.
We are fighting a religious war.
It's not a war with guns or swords
except the sword of the Spirit.
But it's a war nonetheless.
On the political front, this is a day
of battle where we are battling secularism We
see the evidence of this every day in
the press where there is this constant drive
to put Christianity right out of public life.
That's the aim of the secularists.
To drive Christianity out of public life.
That's the battle on the political front.
I trust you'll never lose sight of that.
That's what makes the abortion issue bigger than
the abortion issue.
Abortion in itself is a big enough issue,
but it has a bigger issue attendant on
it.
It is a major plank in the secularist
policy to demean and drive out Christian ethics
and Christian belief.
From the public forum, on the social front,
we have what's often called the culture war.
The effort to replace all moral consciousness based
on the word of God with the immoral.
Some people say amoral, don't you believe it?
There is no such thing as amoral philosophy.
Or they may call it that.
Anything that is not for God is against
Him.
There is no neutrality.
If it's not moral, it's immoral.
Not amoral, as if there were some center
ground.
It's this effort to replace the moral consciousness
based on the word of God with immoral
philosophy.
That philosophy of hedonistic self-worship.
Man-lovers of pleasure more than lovers of
God.
To replace it with a theory of godless
relativism and pragmatism.
If it works for me, it must be
true.
If it works for me, it must be
good.
That's where we are today.
Now the outcome of these battles depends, or
on the outcome should I say, depends the
future of the nation.
And indeed the future of the church.
The church that does not line up in
the day of battle will soon be swallowed
up.
And its existence is not worth maintaining.
And if the church does not stand, this
nation will certainly suffer.
The battle has been declared.
The lines have been drawn up.
Today no less than in Reformation days we
face a day of battle.
We pass on for a moment to the
warriors in this day of battle.
In such a day, thank God, He always
prepares His warriors.
You see it in the New Testament.
It's not an accident that there happened to
be a Paul.
That was God's provision.
He was the warrior.
There were many others.
True of the Reformation period as well.
When you look at that period, one of
the richest as far as personalities go in
all of church history.
There are names that most of us know.
Now I hope that some of you will
take the time to read the biographies of
some of these men.
Martin Luther, the monk who shook the world.
What a wonderful story.
I like to think of Luther hammering the
nails into the church door in Wittenberg.
That's what he was doing.
That's what he thought he was doing.
In reality, he was hammering the nails in
the coffin of medieval potpourri.
Wonderful story.
How he came to the knowledge of justification
by free grace through faith alone in Jesus
Christ.
How he came to the knowledge of the
authority of scripture, the priesthood of believers.
How he came to the knowledge, which he
expressed much, much more strongly than John Calvin
ever did, of the absolute sovereignty of God
in his predestinating purpose and in his salvation
of sinners.
Martin Luther, a great warrior.
Ulrich Zwingli, who planted the gospel standard in
Switzerland.
Now let me have a little word with
all the professional historians here.
I have a lot of, you know, I
wonder at my temerity.
Ignorance gives you courage.
Dr. Matsko is here.
His wife is here.
Dr. Sidwell is here.
His wife is here.
Dr. Abrams is usually here.
He's backslidden tonight.
These are just a few of the professional
historians.
Now what I want to suggest, my apologies
brother, I didn't mean to leave you out,
but you have, you see, you've removed yourself
from the front row to the back row,
and how you can stay a historian and
look after a high school, I don't know.
That's a history in itself to write.
But I would like to suggest to one
of these men that you get your resources
together and let the world have a good
biography of Ulrich Zwingli.
He's a man well worth having.
Another one, I mean an up-to-date
biography, a real sympathetic but honest biography.
Another one would be William Farrell.
I get mad when I read what's available
to me on William Farrell, written by people
who really have very little skill and they
haven't done the work.
So here are a couple I would really
like to see.
There's more in Zwingli than in Farrell, but
you fellas are good.
Can you have that ready for Tuesday, Mark?
Thank you.
John will do the other one for next
weekend.
Anyway, William Tyndale.
Never take this Bible in your hand without
thinking.
William Tyndale, by his massive linguistic labors, his
lonely death in a cold and damp prison
cell, gave me that book in the English
language.
John Calvin, scholar, preacher, teacher, pastor, and how
this sticks in the craw of most historians,
the man more than any who's the framer
of our modern society.
Much of what we take for granted from
the labors of Calvin, Hugh Latimer.
Now, some of you who have been coming
here for years will know all about Hugh
Latimer, for Dr. Pinozian came here as Hugh
Latimer.
I have preached on Hugh Latimer.
Some of you may never have heard of
him, which is a pity.
Read about him, one of England's martyred bishops.
I love Hugh Latimer because he was a
very down-to-earth man.
He wasn't born with a silver spoon in
his mouth.
He was just a very ordinary man, greatly
gifted of God.
He was saved in a wonderful way.
Hugh Latimer was a papist, and he hated
the Reformation.
The Protestants wondered, how could we win Latimer
for Christ?
Impossible, you couldn't talk to him.
He was such a stone-headed man, you
couldn't get through to him.
And then Hugh Bilney, little, not Hugh, Thomas
Bilney, Little Bilney they called him, he conceived
a plan.
You see, when you're going fishing, you don't
always jump in and clobber the fish over
the head with a sledgehammer and drag it
out.
There are ways to lure it.
Well, he went fishing.
And so he went to Latimer, Father Latimer,
as he was.
And he said, Father, I would like to
make my confession to you.
And Latimer was delighted.
He said, here at last, I'm winning the
battle.
I'm getting this leading Protestant to come.
He's coming to confession.
And so they got to the confessional.
And Hugh Bilney, or I will give him
Latimer's name, Bilney started.
And he gave him his testimony.
And he confessed the gospel of Christ.
And as Latimer listened, God opened his heart.
And he became one of the fieriest men
of God England ever had.
I love to think of Latimer standing before
Henry VIII.
Who else but Latimer would have had the
temerity to go to the royal presence and
preach on command.
And take as his text, whoremongers and adulterers
God will judge.
But that's what he preached on.
To Henry VIII.
His life was in peril.
He was commanded to come back the next
time to preach.
But this time, Master Latimer, be careful what
you say.
And it was then that Latimer came.
And he apostrophized in front of Henry VIII.
And he said, be careful, Hugh Latimer, what
you say today.
You stand in the presence of King Henry
who can have your head.
No doubt the old reprobate king was thinking
he had the preacher where he wanted him.
But Latimer went on and he said, but
be careful, Hugh Latimer, what you say today.
For you stand in the presence of the
King of Kings who can have your soul.
And then he announced his text and preached
again.
Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Give us preachers like that and we can
go into any fight and into any battle.
It was Thomas Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of
Canterbury.
Not by nature a fighting man.
Not a Latimer.
Not even by nature a courageous man, a
diplomat, a courtier, but a warrior nonetheless.
And of course the one I love to
come to, John Knox, the father of Scottish
Presbyterianism.
In many ways in my book the father
of the Scottish nation.
Other were warriors we have all got to
hear about.
There are some not so well known.
Few people nowadays know much about Philip Melanchthon.
One of Europe's leading scholars.
A gentle soul.
In many ways a contradictory character.
Hard to sum him up.
And yet Luther's right hand man.
Patrick Hamilton of the Royal House of Scotland.
The proto-martyr of the Protestant Reformation.
George Wishart, John Knox's mentor.
The man through whose death Knox was set
apart on his course to lead the Scottish
Reformation.
Martin Butzer, theologian.
Bridge builder among Protestants.
Who ended his days a theological teacher in
Cambridge University.
And so you could go on of others
not so well known.
And I should say then there were the
Anabaptists.
There were some Anabaptists who were very wild
spirits.
Thomas Muntzer was a wild leader of wild
men.
Some of them were so mystical that they
gave up the Bible.
So spiritual they thought they didn't need the
Bible.
They had God speaking them directly.
Some of them would take the scriptures so
literally become as little children.
That they would sit down and play with
little dolls.
Bring the whole work of God into disrepute.
But there were many powerful men of God
among them.
Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz were Swiss preachers
and martyrs.
Balthasar Hubmeier was once a student of the
famed Roman Catholic theologian Dr. Eck.
He became a Protestant and then he became
an Anabaptist.
He died as a martyr in Vienna in
1528, still a young man.
But before he died he had led thousands,
literally thousands to the knowledge of Christ.
There were many others.
There were princes.
Some had little feeling for the Reformation.
But the Lord still used them.
There were others who were openly behind the
Reformation.
Very few like the King of Sweden.
A man known in history as Gustavus Adolphus.
A great soldier.
An honorable prince.
A genuine Protestant.
A champion of Northern European Protestantism.
Who in the course of the Thirty Years
War saved the cause of liberty and of
truth.
These are warriors.
Now I have names.
I haven't said much about them really.
It's too big a field to cover.
The point I'm making is this.
We're in a war.
We need warriors today.
In every realm.
We need men in the political realm.
Men of God.
I don't want to get into party politics.
That's nothing to do with me.
But I want to tell you I would
as soon sell my soul to the devil.
As sell my soul to the Democratic Party.
Or the Republican Party.
Or any other party.
It's time we had men of God who
took their stand on that book as Luther
did.
And say my conscience is captive to the
Word of God.
I don't think men like that are eminently
electable in modern America.
Well if they're not electable so be it.
Better keep your conscience and be unelected than
to be elected and sell out the truth
of God.
I realize there are issues where compromise is
the art of politics.
There are issues where you've got to deal
incrementally.
I understand that.
And I do not condemn men for getting
part of what they want when they can't
get all of what they want.
But there are other issues where it's black
and white.
Truth and error.
God and the devil.
Heaven and hell.
And there's no room for compromise.
We need warriors in that realm.
We need warriors in the church.
We need men for ministers.
Men.
Not apologies for men.
Not time servers.
Not people looking for a job.
God saved the free Presbyterian church from ministers
who have it as a job.
I'd rather be a garbage collector.
And I mean this sincerely.
Than to have the ministry for a job
merely.
Men called to stand.
Who will not bow nor bend nor break.
Under the pressure.
There's a place for great men.
But very few of us can be great.
There's a place for little men.
What I'm saying to you if you're saved.
Whatever you're calling in life.
Whether you walk the shop floor.
Work in the factory line.
Teach in school.
Or whatever.
There's a place for you.
In this day of battle.
God's looking for his warriors.
He's given us the weapons.
In the reformation the princes wielded the sword.
The reformation however was fought not so much
with sword as with better weapons than these.
The reformers wielded words.
They wielded ideas.
They wielded their pens.
They were men of peace.
I know that as Wingley died in the
battlefield.
If the cantons had taken his advice.
A few years earlier there would have been
no such necessity.
But even men of peace at times.
Have to be willing to die.
On a battlefield.
Luther.
Despite all his bellicose utterances.
That lead some people to think that he
was a man of war.
Luther was a man.
Who at the cost of his own popularity.
Denounced the peasants revolt.
He was not in favor of seeking.
To forward the cause of liberty.
By revolution.
The reformers realized what Paul said.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.
But they're mighty through God to the pulling
down of strongholds.
What were the real weapons in the reformation.
I will list them for you.
I dare preach on them.
First and foremost the Bible.
And placing it in the hands of the
people.
What was Luther's greatest work?
It was not the 95 theses.
That was important.
It was not his work the Babylonian captivity
of the church.
That was important.
It was not all the many books that
he wrote.
They were certainly important.
The greatest single work of Luther.
Was his translation of the Bible.
To put the word of God in the
hands of the German people.
What did more than anything else.
To bring the cause of truth to England.
And bring it, drag it, kicking and screaming.
Out of many evil superstition.
It was the production of the Bible.
This was Tyndale's great aim, ambition and prayer.
It was his ambition that he would put
this into the hands of the plow boy.
And make him no more than the ignorant
priests who filled the pulpits.
Can I tell you.
If you and I will start taking this
book seriously.
Dare to believe it.
Let's get out of this modern mold.
This arrogance of the modern mind.
Of coming to criticize this book.
Let me tell you the word of God
is beyond my criticism.
Hebrews 4 tells me it is the critic.
It is the judge.
Let's dare to believe this book.
Now everybody here almost I'm sure.
Would say we believe the Bible.
It's the word of God.
I don't want to be guilty of saying
the same thing again and again and again.
But I can do no better than what
Spurgeon said.
When he said you believe it's the Bible
you put it up on the shelf.
And you can take your finger and trace
damnation.
The word damnation.
In the dust that's gathered on it's cover.
We're talking about young men.
Taking their stand for God.
Young fellas you're never going to amount to
anything until you're man of that book.
The saying of John Wesley.
He was the man of one book.
That book.
Martin Luther commented on the 40th Psalm.
In the volume of the book it is
written of me.
He said what book?
There is only one book.
That's the attitude.
Dare to believe the book.
Be like Jeremiah.
Thy words were found and I did eat
them.
Young man are you in the book of
God?
Are you studying the book of God?
Don't make your school studies an excuse for
neglecting God's word.
If you're learning biology at the expense of
learning Christ you're sinning.
Oh let's get to the book of God.
Read it.
Learn it.
Study it.
Imbibe it.
Eat it.
Till it becomes part of us.
Think in the categories and terms of Scripture.
Speak in the categories and terms of Scripture.
Let this be the most natural thing in
the world.
That wherever you go you're putting God's word
in the hands of men and women.
What will change America?
If anything is to change America for the
good it will not be an act of
Congress.
It will not be a judicial action.
It will not be because of a right
wing Supreme Court.
It will be by the power of the
word of God.
Let loose in the nation.
You know what that means?
The most critical bunch of people in America
to its future are God's people.
Secondly it means that among God's people the
preachers are the ones who are called in
this day of battle to the most important
position.
That God can give a man this sight
of heaven.
This is the weapon.
This is the sword of the Spirit.
Learn to use it.
Don't simply hold it up for admiration.
We have enough preachers who can do that.
They can hold it up and talk about
the jewels in the hilt.
Men and women use the sword.
That's the weapon.
There was also the spread of evangelical literature.
The dissemination of Christian information.
Whatever the cost they got out the truth.
They were a witnessing people.
It's a great mark of both the Waldensian
church and the Reformation churches.
Be they Lutheran, Calvinistic or Anabaptist.
They were witnessing people.
They were a people who were on the
move to make converts.
That's what they were.
Now we're living in a day when that's
called proselytizing.
If it hasn't already reached your business it
soon will.
It will be against the law to speak
to somebody about the truth of the gospel.
You'll be harassing them.
Soon we're going to have to pay to
be witnesses.
But spreading by literature, by word, the gospel
of Christ.
That was a weapon.
Here's a big one.
So big I thought of giving a night
to it in itself.
But I'll not do that.
That was their commitment to the education of
preachers.
You see Luther and the others realized something.
God has given me a work to do.
But unless the work is to die with
the first generation of reformers.
They needed men to carry it on.
The Old Testament prophets had the school of
the prophets.
What did Luther do?
He made his name in the university in
Wittenberg.
The Elector Frederick didn't really intend it to
be a Protestant university.
That's what Luther made it.
At least his part of it.
As preachers, young men got the vision.
And they came and they sat around his
feet to learn the word and go out
on fire for God.
Philip of Hesse realized the same need.
Established the University of Marburg.
Martin Boucher in Strasbourg in the 1640s.
As I said, the 1540s.
He established first the gymnasium and then the
seminary.
John Calvin in Geneva established the academy.
Later became the University of Geneva.
In England, Cambridge University was the home of
the Reformation.
In Scotland, Knox established a general education system.
And in time, the universities of St. Andrews
and Edinburgh became training ground for preachers.
Here in America, the same trend continued, did
it not?
The men who came here to establish this
nation on a Protestant basis made sure that
they had places for the training of young
people and especially for young preachers.
They founded Yale and Harvard and Princeton.
All to keep up a stream of young
men prepared to be warriors for God.
Men and women, that's the need for today.
We need trained warriors, not weak-kneed compromisers.
Not whirlings, warriors anointed of God.
Men who know what they believe, why they
believe it.
And love what they know.
In the free church, ever since our inception,
we have maintained a denominational seminary.
Why?
God has given us great leaders.
As a young fellow, I got to listen
to Ian Paisley in his praying.
Dr. Paisley, in my opinion, is one of
the greatest Irish men of the 20th century,
if not the greatest.
Combination of theologian, church historian, orator, preacher, soul
winner, church planter, evangelist, and pastor.
God has used his ministry in a marvelous
way.
But unless it's to die with him, he
realized we need to train men to carry
on the work of God.
It's the same here in the United States.
I must confess to my, well, in honesty,
but I must confess to my own shame,
I have never, never approached anything near the
level of a Dr. Paisley.
I consider it my honor to have served
under him.
But whatever ministry God has given me over
the past 20, what, 3 years, in this
congregation and in the denomination here in North
America, can only succeed, can only be significant,
as God raises up men of vision, of
courage, of vigor, who will say, this is
my vision, I want to take this work
forward.
We have a seminary, I thank God for
it.
I also thank God I don't have to
teach in it anymore.
That's Dr. Barrett's job with Mr. Bream and
others, eminently qualified to teach.
Their burden is to see young men ablaze
with the love of God, called, preparing to
be warriors in the great Protestant tradition.
When they come, they will take all the
weapons that I have mentioned, and they will
use those weapons, but at the end of
the day, they will have to get alone
with God, pour out their hearts to Him
and say, Lord, I have served you with
all the energy and ability that you have
given me, but victory is of the Lord.
That's the winning of the war.
When you stop to think of it, the
cause of God doesn't look like a victorious
cause, never did.
You know, when Luther arrived in the scene,
the Pope didn't even take him seriously.
The Pope thought, you know, this is some
little pebble thrown into a tiny little pool
in the back of Beyond in Germany.
It will never trouble me, but it troubled
him before very long.
It didn't look very hopeful, but God gave
the victory.
And I could go right through church history
showing you the but-Gods, but-God, but
-God, victories of the Lord.
Do you know what that means?
Nothing is impossible.
I can't tell you what God's purpose for
America is, but I can tell you God's
purpose for you and me is to stand
for His truth, to be faithful to His
Son, to preach His gospel, to carry it
out and to take the battle to the
enemy of God and His truth and His
sovereignty.
He will give us the victory we need.
So then, what's wrong today?
This is why I read Jeremiah 2 and
I really can't even get into it.
What's wrong today?
If all this is so, if victory is
there for us from the Lord, what's wrong?
Well, read Jeremiah 2 again, think of it
very carefully.
The trouble is, so many professing Christians are
so backslidden.
Am I talking about you?
God says to you as He did to
Israel, I remember when you were first saved.
I remember the love of your espousals.
I remember how you went after me.
I remember how your heart was open to
me.
What's happened that you've forsaken me?
There's a question that should be in everybody's
lips tonight.
Jeremiah gives it in verse 6.
Where is the Lord who brought us up
out of Egypt?
Where is the Lord who has done great
things in the past?
Where is He?
Does that question never haunt you?
I have to say it haunts me constantly.
I read of the early church.
I read of the Reformation.
I read of the Jonathan Edwards Revival.
I read of the Whitfield Wesley Revivals.
I read of the Moody Sankey Revivals.
I read of God's moving here and there.
And again and again the question haunts me.
Where is the Lord who has done such
great things?
Where is He?
Oh, the Lord's where He always was.
Trouble is, as Jeremiah says, nobody seems to
be even asking.
My people have settled down in a worldly
attitude.
Quite happy to be saved from hell.
But live as much like the devil as
they can get away with.
Here's a desire for restoration.
Where is the Lord?
You'll find Him where you left Him.
A desire for restoration.
A willingness for repentance.
To deal with the causes of our estrangement.
With the reassurance that there's nothing facing us
today that the Lord hasn't dealt with in
former years.
What He did for the Reformers, He can
do for us.
What He did for the Revivalists, He can
do for us.
Let me bring it up to date.
Many of you are students or faculty at
Bob Jones University.
Especially of the students, I wonder how many
of you have ever bothered really to find
much out at all about the life and
the ministry of the founder of the institution
that you're a part of.
Read of how God used him.
Read of a day when a preacher didn't
go to preach for three nights and have
the absolute lunacy to call it revival.
Read of a day when a man went
blazing a trail across America and people listened.
Read of a day when through the preaching
of the gospel, not only were sinners saved,
liquor establishments were closed down, never to open
again.
Then ask yourself, where is the Lord who
did such thing?
All we face a battle on.
We have the weapons.
We need the warriors.
We have the God of battles on our
side.
The big question is what we were singing
earlier.
Who is on the Lord's side?
Who will serve the King?
The horse has been prepared against the day
of battle.
But victory is of the Lord.
Let's trust in Him and be ready with
powder dry to serve Him whatever the cost
may be.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
In just a moment the meeting will be
over.
Who is on the Lord's side?
Who will serve the King?
What a question.
I wonder what the answer is.
Am I talking to people tonight?
Do you remember when you were saved?
Do you remember even how you were committed
to Christ?
And yet, you've left the love of your
espousals, wandering through life, a miserable
Christian.
And if God were to take you home
tonight, you'd have to say, Lord, I've never
done anything great for God.
This is a day to get right with
Him.
A time to commit ourselves again to be
the man and woman we need to be
in the service of Christ.
Time to get such a vision of our
Savior to say He is worthy of all
that I can do in His name.
This is a time to become a warrior,
to serve the King.
If you're not saved, if you're backslidden, if
you'd like to talk with Dr. Barrett or
Mr. Brim or me, we'd be happy to
seek to help you to Christ.
If you're saved and want you to do
what the Lord challenged me to do many,
many years ago, you go get alone with
God and ask the Lord, Lord, what would
you have me to do?
What do you want me to do, Lord?
I give you my life.
Use me in the battle of God and
truth.
Father in heaven, bless Thy word to every
heart.
Save us, O Lord, from a backslidden heart,
a cold indifference that leaves us unmoved at
the call of God or the cause of
Christ.
Lord, we pray that Thou wilt launch forth
man into the work of God across this
nation and across this world.
Lord, give us vision.
Lord, give us vigor.
Lord, give us the victory.
Let us see sinners saved, churches established, communities
moved, truth uplifted, Satan defeated, the nation impacted
by the mighty power of God.
Lord, as we battle against ecumenism and other
forms of apostasy, as we battle against secularism,
as we battle against the hedonism that so
curses modern society, Lord, we cry to Thee,
give us the power of Thy Spirit, the
anointing of Thy grace, the smile of Thine
approval and the success of Thine intervention on
our behalf.
Hear our prayer and give lasting fruit for
this time spent together this evening.
Part us now with Thy blessing and keep
us in Thy fear.
Be the abiding portion of all Thy people
both this night until the Lord Jesus either
calls us home or comes again in all
His glory.
We ask in our Savior's precious name.
Amen.