Podcast appearances and mentions of francis asbury

Paulo Lopes is the Emerging Leaders Director for World Methodist Evangelism. On today's episode of The Evangelism Podcast we talk about the rich tradition of evangelism in Wesleyan Methodist movements going all the back to John Wesley and Francis Asbury.  The goal of World Methodist Evangelism is to be a connection point for the worldwide Wesleyan Methodist family offering training, gathering opportunities, and resources that empower Christ followers to share their faith in the context of today's realities. We talk about the importance of evangelism and the need for revival in the church. Paulo Lopes shares his observations on the current state of the church and the signs of awakening and hunger for God that he has seen around the world.

This week on table talk Kyle is joined by Rev. Bill Kierce President of the Francis Asbury Society, they discuss the history of Bishop Francis Asbury as well as how we can take a note from his ministry in our church today.

Dr. David Watson joins us to discuss the history and evolution of modern Methodism, particularly the journey from the days of Francis Asbury to the current state of the Methodist Church. How did we transition from the foundational influence of Asbury to the significant changes and challenges facing the Methodist Church today? We'll explore the key moments, movements, and figures that have shaped Methodism over the years and discuss the modern revolution happening within the church.David is the Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary and has a wealth of knowledge and experience, having authored and edited numerous publications, including Key United Methodist Beliefs; Wesley, Wesleyans, and Reading Bible as Scripture; and Scripture and the Life of God: Why the Bible Matters Today More than Ever. He's also the Lead Editor of Firebrand and co-host of the Firebrand Podcast.Join us for this insightful conversation as we uncover the historical and theological developments in Methodism and what they mean for the future of the church. You won't want to miss this discussion with David on Methodist history and its contemporary implications.

Grace and peace to you. I'm Rev. Joe Cailles, the pastor of Peakland United Methodist Church in Lynchburg Virginia. Today is Wednesday, October 25, 2023 Peakland United Methodist Church is reading this book, Being a United Methodist Christian which explores our beliefs, our best practices and our history as a United Methodist Christian. This week we're reading chapter 3 of the book, Our United Methodist Story! Our Methodist story begins with Rev. John Wesley, a priest in the church of England who started the Methodist movement nearly 300 years ago at Oxford University with a small group of likeminded folks who were so dedicated to their Bible studies, prayer, and service to those in needs that other mocked them with the name Methodist. I spoke last week about Wesley's misadventures as a parish priest in the new American town of Savannah, Georgia. At the start of 1738, John was back in England and at his lowest professionally and spiritually. He doubted his effectiveness as a priest, and he doubted that his faith was genuine. In the evening of May 24, 1738, John Wesley went reluctantly to a Methodist meeting at Aldersgate Street in London. He heard a reading from the preface of Martin Luther's commentary of the book of Romans. Wesley later wrote, “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." Friends, a couple of days ago, I re-read the preface to Martin Luther's commentary to the book of Romans. I know beyond a doubt there is a God in heaven because the preface to Martin Luther's commentary on the book of Romans is the most theologically dense and surprisingly dry writing that only God could have warmed Wesley's heart with those words. Wow. With his heart strangely and wonderfully warmed John Wesley's methodist movement grew and grew throughout Great Britain and into the American colonies. In December 1784, the methodist in America established the Methodist Episcopal Church, the first American born Christian denomination. Under the leadership of Francis Asbury, the Methodists in American grew and grew. Famous Methodists of the 19th century include. Richard Allen, a black American methodist who established the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 after facing discrimination in the white methodist church and Thomas B Welch, a methodist minister and dentist, who in 1869 created Methodist Unfermented Communion Wine. Commonly known as grape juice. As the American nation grew so did the Methodists. As American divided on the issues of slavery, so did the Methodists who split into northern and southern branches in 1845. Through the 20th century Methodists united with other denominations forming the current United Methodist Church today. Marjorie Matthews was the first woman elected as a United Methodist bishop in 1980. Now in the 21st century, the United Methodist Church is the largest of all the methodist denominations with something like 12 million members worldwide. The fastest growing area of United Methodism is now in Africa. The newest methodist denomination is the Global Methodist Church formed by methodists who want to maintain traditional practices in marriage and ordination. Pastor Dave Drinkard preached at Peakland this past Sunday, and he reminded us that throughout our history, we United Methodists are at our best, when we love God and when we love our neighbors. We worship together and we nurture our Christian faith together and we serve Christ together out in the world. That's what we're doing at Peakland, and you are welcome to join and learn and experience what it means being a United Methodist Christian.

Listen to Jo share about her and her husband's experience at the Asbury Revival in Wilmore, KY.Topics covered:What we witnessed at Asbury in both the physical and the spiritual realm.Who is Francis Asbury?What is God saying through this revival?What do we do with it?Support the showhttps://www.hisvessel.org/programs

Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury both played massive roles in history. One in missions and one as a circuit rider in America. This episode looks at their lives and the ordination sermon that Thomas Coke ordained Francis Asbury enacted.Special thanks to Avery Harrington for reading this sermon. Join Revived Studios on Patreon for more!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today Andy shares on Francis Asbury and the beginnings of the Circuit Rider movement. then he asks some questions from some of the previous weeks.

This part 40 of a series of podcasts that will give you a snapshot of the No Name Heroes of the Faith. People who God used in small ways to make big things happen. Francis Asbury is the founder of the American Methodist Church. This article briefly describes his remarkable life. I am reading to you an article from issue 23 "Spiritual Awakenings in America." https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/issue/spiritual-awakenings-in-north-americaThe main source I will be using for these episodes will come from the pages of Christian History Magazine. Check them out at https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/issues

The weekly podcast of Bishop Andy C. Lewter.  This week Bishop Lewter explores the impact of Francis Asbury on the growth and expansion of the Methodist Church in America.

Join us as we look at how to pray for our city and also talk about Francis Asbury and one of his last acts he did as a great revivalist.

Anyone travelling through the United States will come across schools, colleges and universities that carry the name of Asbury. They bear witness to a remarkable hero of the faith.

Personal Revival, Nation Awakening & Generational Reformation In this episode of The Torch, Brian speaks on answering the call the Lord has placed upon you. He uses the example of how God used Francis Asbury during the founding of America to spread the Gospel across the 13 colonies and that it was his willingness to answer the call of God on his life that allowed him to be used to impact the nation. For all the latest on all things Victory, be sure to check out our website at https://victoryfla.com and follow us on social media. Welcome to The Torch A podcast with Brian Gibbs presenting Biblical insights and prophetic perspectives for cultural and current events in this hour. Contending for personal revival, national awakening and generational reformation. Produced by VICTORY: A Church of His Presence and Light The Fire Ministries. Coming to you from Sarasota, Florida —Thank you for joining us. Download our app at https://victoryfla.com/app Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victorychurchfla/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victorychurchfla/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/victorychurchfl/

Jill Nelson reports on Turkey's geopolitical ambitions and what worries Western nations; Mary Reichard talks to a security specialist about the plight of missionaries kidnapped in Haiti; and Paul Butler remembers the circuit-riding preacher Francis Asbury who spread Methodism across the country. Plus: commentary from Cal Thomas, illegal landings, and the Thursday morning news.Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate. Additional support comes from Christianbook.com. Great gifts to help you bring on the joy. Christianbook.com. From Dordt University, offering reimbursed campus visits to show you firsthand how Dordt's Christ-centered education leads to lifelong discipleship. Details at Dordt.edu/visit. And from Samaritan Ministries. It's not insurance, it's Christians paying one another's medical expenses. More at samaritanministries.org/worldpodcast

Celebrations have been taking place to mark 250 years since Francis Asbury's missional journey from England to America. In this week's podcast we learn more about the life and legacy of Francis Asbury from Sarah Hollingdale, Methodist Heritage Officer and Ashley Boggan Dreff, General Secretary  of the UMC Commission on Archives and History. The Vice-President of the Methodist Conference, Barbara Easton, explains why she is one of Asbury's biggest fans. 

A great early Methodist "pioneer preacher" was Francis Asbury. His dedication to prayer gave him remarkable passion and zeal for his calling. Let's learn from his prayerfulness today.

In this segment Daniel Lane who plays Francis Asbury in the Methodist revival Show and has a narrator piece in the amazing Hawaiian revival shows, shares untold facts that never made airtime and gives a preview of this amazing revival show history.

"Aku hendak bergemar dalam perintah-perintah-Mu yang kucintai itu. Aku menaikkan tanganku kepada perintah-perintah-Mu yang kucintai, dan aku hendak merenungkan ketetapan-ketetapan-Mu. Ingatlah firman yang Kaukatakan kepada hamba-Mu, oleh karena Engkau telah membuat aku berharap. Inilah penghiburanku dalam sengsaraku, bahwa janji-Mu menghidupkan aku." (Mzm 119:47-50) Renungan: Pada waktu masih remaja, Francis Asbury sering berjalan-jalan mengelilingi tempat kerja pandai besi yang luas. Suatu hari ia memiliki kesempatan untuk berbincang-bincang dengan salah seorang pandai besi. "Selamat sore Pak. Landasan besi itu besar sekali," kata Francis mengawali perbincangannya dengan laki-laki bernama Foxall. "Landasan itu memang yang terbesar di daerah ini Nak," kata Foxall menjelaskan pada Francis. Sejak hari itu Francis menjadi akrab dengan Foxall. Suatu hari Foxall bertanya kepada Francis, "Francis, apakah engkau seorang Kristen?" Francis tertawa dan berkata, "Di sekolah saya dipanggil hamba Tuhan, karena setiap hari Minggu saya beribadah, lagi pula saya dikenal sebagai orang jujur." "Bukan itu. Yang kumaksud sebagai seorang Kristen adalah seorang yang memiliki hubungan pribadi dengan Tuhan Yesus," kata Foxall kepada Francis. Kemudian Foxall menjelaskan arti dan bagaimana membina hubungan pribadinya dengan Tuhan Yesus. Kemudian di usia 26 tahun Francis Asbury menyerahkan dirinya sebagai penginjil ke Amerika Serikat. Sebagai pengikut Yesus seharusnya kita memiliki hubungan yang intim dengan Tuhan. Bukankah dua orang yang saling mengasihi memiliki hubungan yang intim? Hubungan yang intim dengan Tuhan tidak bisa dibina jika kita datang kepada-Nya hanya pada hari Minggu saja. Keintiman akan tercipta jika kita mau belajar mendisiplin diri untuk berdoa dan membaca firman Tuhan tiap hari. Kesibukan atau pekerjaan yang menumpuk tidak boleh dijadikan sebagai alasan untuk mengabaikan jam doa kita. Bahkan kepadatan pelayanan pun tidak bisa menggantikan kedudukan doa pribadi kita. Kita akan merasakan perbedaan yang besar ketika mengisi hari dengan berdoa dibandingkan dengan hari tanpa berdoa. Sadarilah bahwa jiwa kita butuh makanan rohani dan itu hanya bisa kita dapatkan jika kita memiliki hubungan yang intim dengan Tuhan. Tuhan Yesus sedang menanti kedatangan kita di hadirat-Nya saat ini. Jadi, jangan biarkan Dia menunggu lebih lama lagi. Hampiri Dia sekarang juga. Yakinlah bahwa jika kita menanggalkan berbagai alasan atau kemalasan rohani dan datang pada-Nya saat ini juga, maka kita akan merasakan damai sejahtera yang melimpah dalam hati kita. Tuhan Yesus memberkati. Doa: Tuhan Yesus, ada banyak kegelisahan yang saat ini mendera hatiku. Kini aku sadari bahwa itu semua diakibatkan karena selama ini hubunganku dengan-Mu hanya terbatas saling mengenal dan bukan saling mengasihi. Bantulah aku agar hatiku mau lebih terbuka untuk semakin dekat dan intim dengan-Mu, sehingga hatiku dipenuhi dengan sukacita-Mu. Amin. (Dod).

Derek and Michael continue the series on Circuit Rider History. They elaborate on the defining moments that changed the course of Francis Asbury and John Wesley's lives. We learn about Wesley's transformation from being someone stuck in religion trying to earn righteousness, into someone preaching life back into dead religion. Derek challenges us to examine ourselves because it's possible to be in ministry but not be born again.

October 25. Francis Asbury. Although Asbury suffered much and was often ill, on this date in 1773, after nearly dying, he miraculously rebounded.  Asbury spent 45 years in the colonies and the newly independent United States as a circuit-riding preacher, a minister, and a bishop. It is estimated that he ordained 2,000 ministers and rode more than 130,000 miles […] The post Francis Asbury, Britain, Minister first appeared on 365 Christian Men.

Derek and Michael continue the series on Circuit Rider History. They elaborate on the defining moments that changed the course of Francis Asbury and John Wesley's lives. We learn about Wesley's transformation from being someone stuck in religion trying to earn righteousness, into someone preaching life back into dead religion. Derek challenges us to examine ourselves because it's possible to be in ministry but not be born again.

Derek and Michael continue the series on Circuit Rider History. They elaborate on the defining moments that changed the course of Francis Asbury and John Wesley's lives. We learn about Wesley's transformation from being someone stuck in religion trying to earn righteousness, into someone preaching life back into dead religion. Derek challenges us to examine ourselves because it's possible to be in ministry but not be born again.

Francis Asbury's life and ministry was devoted to preaching the good news of the Gospel. During the Second Great Awakening, Asbury helped spread Methodism across colonial America. Hear more about him from Assistant Provost and Affiliate Professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Brian Yeich.

Derek Mack teaches on the history of the original Circuit Riders. We are inspired by men like John Wesley and Francis Asbury and the gritty DNA they carried. We are challenged to sign up for being uncomfortable and to raise our expectations for our lives in order to make a difference in the world.

Derek Mack teaches on the history of the original Circuit Riders. We are inspired by men like John Wesley and Francis Asbury and the gritty DNA they carried. We are challenged to sign up for being uncomfortable and to raise our expectations for our lives in order to make a difference in the world.

Derek Mack teaches on the history of the original Circuit Riders. We are inspired by men like John Wesley and Francis Asbury and the gritty DNA they carried. We are challenged to sign up for being uncomfortable and to raise our expectations for our lives in order to make a difference in the world.

Thomas Coke has been called – “The Apostle of Methodism” and “The Father of Methodist Missions.” John Wesley called him “The Flea” because he traveled around so much! Thomas Coke, was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States – along with Francis Asbury. During his lifetime, he set up the General Conference, the Book of Discipline, and the Trust Clause which states that property is not held by the local congregations, but by the denomination. He traveled to America nine times, and his love for missions is what helped make the church global. So, join us Today on this episode of the Methodical Methodist Podcast as we will explore the life and ministry of Thomas Coke. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review! Listen to me here: https://anchor.fm/methodical-methodist --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/methodical-methodist/support

Francis Asbury was one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. Although he was not actually born in America, Asbury was the leading figure of American Methodism in the 18th century, and his contribution to the Methodist Movement is undeniable. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review! Listen to me here: www.anchor.fm/methodical-methodist --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/methodical-methodist/support

INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH MULTIPLICATION—Ralph Moore “He maximized all he had!” These are the words I want to see on my tombstone. Every one of us hopes that we will someday hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” For me, getting there means leveraging every one of my spiritual gifts, skills and resources for the Kingdom of God.If you're reading this, I bet you feel the same way. IN THIS SESSION I'LL TEACH YOU I'm hoping to help you along your way. My purpose is to help you satisfy both the investments and callings that God put in you. I want you to die happy, knowing you did all you could with what you had. What would it take for you to be part of God's work in bringing a million people to faith in Jesus Christ? 230,000 total estimated people in church while I never pastored more than 2,000 people. Direct Disciplemaking Church of less than 100 magnified by multiplication–teaching disciples to make disciples. THREE ASSUMPTIONSLet's start with three assumptions that might help move us along a natural pathway from mega to multisite to multiplication. They show that repeating the forms of the recent past will only hinder the kind of multiplication enjoyed by the first century church. Understanding these assumptions will help us build new forms of ministry that better service the function of the Great Commission. Assumption 1: Most megachurch pastors are apostolic (e.g. pioneering, entrepreneurial, activators, etc.), but not all apostolic pastors lead megachurches. You may be apostolic and lead a smaller (MORE NORMAL-SIZE) congregation. Assumption 2: You don't need to lead a large church to make a large impact. Barnabas/Antioch/Paul/John Mark Assumption 3: Every church contains the DNA for a movement. · Churches around the world have morphed from single congregations into fast-growing movements. This is the history of Europe dating back to Barnabas, Paul and the folks in Antioch.· Most American denominations got their start in the same way. The Methodist movement traces its strength back to Francis Asbury. Baptists became the largest segment of American Christianity by rapid church multiplication, spawned from local churches.· Calvary Chapel (Costa Mesa, California)· The Vineyard (Yorba Linda, California)· Hope Chapel (Hermosa Beach, California). Calvary, The Vineyard and Hope Chapel all morphed into movements (chronicled by University of Southern California professor Donald Miller in his book, Reinventing American Protestantism). The key is leadership. If you're dissatisfied with the status quo, you are a potential catalyzing movement maker. My goal is to get you there. Assumption 4: EVERY church should multiply. The rise of the American megachurch is both inspiring and disappointing. The megachurch movement in the US is a recent phenomenon, dating back to the 1970s. The number of these churches has grown quickly, and they are effective in evangelism. Their rise is positive, but congregations exceeding 1,000 members still account for only about 10 percent of all evangelical churchgoers. We cannot expect them to shoulder the load of cultural change alone. Megachurches grow faster than mid-size or smaller congregations but that does not make them better. In fact, smaller congregations are better at evangelism and disciplemaking. Their relative poverty and/or isolation forces them to be more relational. PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER Pulling together the above assumptions points to a singular problem: Our focus on building bigger, addition focused “come and see” churches, without a balanced “go and be” dimension, does inhibit most pastors from experiencing multiplication. Our forms tend to restrict the methods Jesus gave to us for accomplishing the Great Commission. The Great Commission remains unfulfilled as potentially apostolic leaders focus on single congregations (large and small) instead of multiplying in other locations and few local churches reach the potential that lies dormant within them. We need new scorecards for success that will allow us to embrace new wineskins for action. Multiplication then appears more complicated and inaccessible because our addition paradigms get in the way. But what about you? If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe. You may also want to connect via www.ralphmoore.net and wordofhope.online .To read more about the Hope Chapel churches, check www.hopechapelchurches.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Story of Perseverance A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, August 18, 2019, the tenth Sunday after Pentecost.                                                        Text: Hebrews 11:29-12:2                                                             Some of you will know that earlier this year I began a new workout regimen. It’s a pretty intense group “circuit training” workout and I try to go three times a week. Each workout is a little different, but they have a certain focus: endurance, strength, power, or “ESP”—a mix of all three.  My very least favorite?  Endurance!  In junior high, I ran short relay races—quick bursts of energy with a handoff of the baton to the next runner—that’s my kind of race. I am not a fan of long-distance runs. Endurance day pushes me to maintain my pace on the treadmill for the long haul and to row, row, row on the rowing machine until my limbs go numb. Ugh. The monotony, the constancy, the exhaustion without recovery… ugh. And this is the metaphor we are given in our scripture today—“run with perseverance the race that is set before us…”  Ugh. The course we’ve been given to travel is long. It stretches all the way back to the beginning and stretches out far into an unknown future. We know that all along the way there have been beautiful vistas and tender moments and horrible outbreaks of human foolishness, violence, and destruction. The race course is an obstacle course. And an endurance course. Our reading picks up shortly after where we left off last Sunday. As a reminder, the folks who originally received these words were weary of waiting for the fulfillment of the promised return of Jesus and God’s Kin-dom to come on earth as in heaven. They were suffering persecution and didn’t understand why relief was so long in coming. The message they receive in the letter to the Hebrews is a reminder not only of the faith embodied by Christ, but the faith, perseverance, and sacrifice of those who came before.  Chapter 11 presents a long litany of the matriarchs and patriarchs from Abel to Noah to Sarah to Moses to Rahab.  The author writes, “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets”—and then that description of the great things accomplished by the faithful and also the great persecution and suffering many experienced—beatings, mocking, imprisonment, torture, and death. (11:32-39) The names and stories are lifted up to encourage and inspire the suffering and weary community—and also, perhaps, to put their experience in perspective. // On this day when we celebrate the contributions of women composers, I want to add to the scriptural litany of our forebears in the faith and share a bit about one of the most well known hymn-writers in American Christianity. Fanny Crosby, a life-long Methodist, lived from 1820-1915 and during her lifetime she wrote more than 8,000 hymns. “She wrote so many that she was forced to use pen names lest the hymnals be filled with her name above all others.” Incidentally, Fanny Crosby was also blind.   She was born into a poor family near Brewster, New York. Within a few weeks, she came down with a bad cold and inflamed eyes that a quack physician treated with hot mustard poultices. The cold went away, but her eyes were blinded. A few months after that, her father died and her mother went to work as a maid, leaving Fanny and her siblings to be raised by her grandmother.// Her love of poetry began early—her first verse, written at age 8, echoed her lifelong refusal to feel sorry for herself: Oh, what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see! I am resolved that in this world Contented I will be.   How many blessings I enjoy That other people don't, To weep and sigh because I’m blind I cannot, and I won’t!   Crosby went on to study and then teach at the New York Institute for the Blind.  While we know her as a hymn writer, in her day she earned great fame and appreciation as a public speaker, for her mission work, her advocacy for the needs of the blind, and for her charitable work in inner cities, especially when she nursed the sick during New York’s terrible cholera epidemic in the late 1840s. Thousands fled the city, but Fanny stayed behind, contracting the disease herself but later recovering.  She probably holds the record for having met more US presidents than any other American, living or dead — an astounding 21. She met every single one (in some cases after they served in the White House) from John Quincy Adams to Woodrow Wilson. She was also the very first woman to address the US Congress.[i] //  Fanny Crosby belongs in the long litany of our forebears who serve as powerful examples of a life of faith, a life of perseverance.   And while I haven’t seen any accounts of Methodist circuit riders being “sawn in two” as recounted of some martyrs, we know that other matriarchs and patriarchs of our Methodist family tree also belong in the litany. Many did marvelous, brave things and were persecuted, rejected, mocked, looked down upon, excluded, and silenced.  From John Wesley to Francis Asbury to Harry Hosier to Jarena Lee to Frances Willard, even up until our own time—Beth Stroud and Frank Schaefer and David Meredith and Karen Oliveto and Anna Blaedel—these and all our Methodist forebears have preached and lived the gospel in love and service even as they endured hardships and persecution.    “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” The next line reads, “Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.”   On endurance day it is tempting to lose heart and to grow weary—and some of us may feel like every day is endurance day.  I don’t know what you’re facing as you run your race that makes it difficult to endure, to persevere. It might be an illness in your body or the body of a loved one; it might be a relationship that is strained or broken; it might be trauma that is held deep in the cells and synapses of your being; it might be fear, oppression, poverty, loneliness, or simply a sense of meaninglessness in your life. We all have real challenges that make it difficult to persevere, things that can lead us to look for security and help in unhelpful places, throw us off course so that we get lost or isolated, or cut others off along the way as we push forward.   What is it that keeps us going? Why persevere when things are difficult and painful? It seems to me we persevere because at some level we believe it matters—whatever “it” is.  Think of those in your life who have persevered through difficulties…what was it that kept them going? Why did they do it?    The great cloud of witnesses in scripture and in our spiritual tradition persevere out of faith that they participate in something bigger than themselves, that their lives are meaningful, that they are precious to God and are part of what God is doing in the world. Jesus, who experienced everything we experience—the sufferings and temptations—all the way to the point of death, persevered out of love.  He had faith in God’s love for him and gave himself fully to the world out of love.    As we wake up day by day, facing whatever we face, we are encouraged to have faith—faith that we are loved, that we matter, that our care, love, mercy, and justice are part of God’s mending of the world, faith that God will help us. We are encouraged to remember that Jesus, who has pioneered and cleared the path for us, knows firsthand the challenges we face and so is merciful and compassionate with us even as we struggle—and maybe complain—to go on.   I wish the journey was a short relay race—push as hard as you can and then hand off the baton and bask in your short burst of brilliance. That would be awesome. But we are given an endurance course, a perseverance course. It is a trail blazed by many who have gone before and, thanks be to God, you and I are never left to travel it alone.     [i] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/poets/fanny-crosby.html http://mentalfloss.com/article/77751/retrobituaries-fanny-crosby-americas-greatest-hymn-writer https://fee.org/articles/blind-but-not-disabled/ https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-blessed-assurance

In a new series, pastors Erica and Steve (holding the fort until their third voice around the table, Sarah, can rejoin them) start telling some family stories from different branches of the Christian family tree.  If you've been to a family reunion before, you know what it's like to see some familiar faces, some folks you don't really know, and maybe even some total strangers, and then you get to discover how you are all connected to each other, and how each of you lives out your idenity in the family in different ways.  Today, Erica shares some "family stories" from figures in her branch of the Christian family tree as an American United Methodist.  As she tells stories about the Wesley brothers and family, and several important American leaders in what became known as Methodism, we get into the ongoing challenge of how to live out our faith daily when it is easy to just compartmentalize our Christianity to an hour or so on Sunday mornings.  This series is a chance to dabble in some church history, to explore different traditions within the Christian faith, and to break out the old church family photo album and learn about some older siblings in the faith!

The Rev. Mary Council-Austin, of the Wisconsin area of the United Methodist Church, is a second-generation clergywoman. Her mother turned 90 and has been an ordained minister for more than 60 years. The Rev. Council-Austin recounts the journey of women in ministry – and the triumphs and challenges over the years – while offering encouragement that God stands ready to bless us. (VOICED BY PROFESSIONAL TALENT) FULL TRANSCRIPT 00:02     When women come together, there's nothing we cannot do. Welcome to the WellSprings Journal podcast, where you will hear from women who have been called by God into lives that speak grace and compassion. They share pain and anger, and life's joys and laughter. Inspiration to call forth your creative spirit await. Listen now. 00:34     Still claiming our identity in Christ by the Reverend Mary Council-Austin, Wisconsin Area of the United Methodist Church. 00:43     In the Old Testament, the phrase tent of meeting principally referred to a place where God would meet with his people, Israel. It was also used as another name for the Tabernacle in Exodus. As Moses went into the tent of meeting, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses. 01:01     Growing up, my nine siblings and I were very familiar with the phrase tent of meeting. We learned about it in Sunday school, youth gatherings, and worship services. We also learned of it in a special room at home my father called our tent of meeting. This weekly tradition was passed on by my grandparents. It was an intentional gathering place in our home. In our tent of meeting, our family prayed, read Scripture, and worked on educational goals and life lessons of service to God. My father would admonish us by saying, "Galvanize your best hopes and dreams, and hold on no matter what you face." 01:36     Growing up, we faced some pretty extreme prejudice and harsh realities of life in our segregated community. I was raised in the AME Zion Church, and followed both parents into ordained ministry. As a child, pictures of African Methodists like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Richard Allen adorned our walls. There were also pictures of John Wesley, his mother Susanna, and Francis Asbury. 02:02     In the fall of 2017, we celebrated my mother's 90th birthday, marking Reverend Martha's journey of more than 60 years in ordained ministry. The beginning of her ministry was not easy. As a young girl attending church meetings, I witnessed the rejection of my mother's ministry and heard her call belittled. Her testimony was referred to as a vapor that would soon dissipate, but God had a plan for her life and ministry. 02:29     Our family moved three times before Dad and Mom built what is our Council family homestead in eastern North Carolina. In earlier years, we sharecropped and Dad worked at the mill. This provided us housing and some limited income. The women of the community canned and preserved food which was shared across families in the neighborhood. We dreamed under canopies of quilt creations and wore crocheted table coverings and modeled doilies on our heads. We were told that our hopes and dreams and prayers would guide us from Earth to Glory. 03:02     The first six children picked cotton and harvested other crops alongside our parents and other families. The remaining four grew up in integrated schools, able to experience a range of new opportunities. Among my siblings are a stay-at-home mom, an airport staffer, a social worker, an educator, a health care worker, military veterans, and ordained ministers. 03:25     I began my ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church in 1978 as a pastor in Wisconsin. My parents and I were still Methodists together in a larger mission around the world. 03:36     The journey of women in ministry across the church and in society for the most part has been a road with celebrated achievements. The dreams and intentional laboring of our grandmothers, mothers, and sisters who carried the torch through the early work of missionary societies, powerful networks, and organizational structures provided more than stepping stones to help women attain full participation in life of the church and society. 04:03     On March 23, 1869, eight women gathered in a prayer meeting at Tremont Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and organized the Women's Foreign Missionary Society, which would become United Methodist Women. Those women raised money to send a doctor, Clara Swain, and a teacher, Isabella Thoburn, to India as missionaries to serve the women of that nation. 04:27     The Methodist Church granted full clergy rights to women in 1956. Maud Keister Jensen was the first to receive such rights. We praise God that the 1968 merger of the Methodist Episcopal and the Evangelical United Brethren Churches, forming the United Methodist Church, affirmed full clergy rights for women. We praise God for clergy sisters who have become outstanding leaders across the church as bishops, district superintendents, agency leaders and staff, and pastors of local congregations and ministries. 05:02     A retired United Methodist colleague reminded me of a day on the journey when we were dreaming of the time when the church would begin to embrace outstanding clergywomen as Episcopal leaders for our church. The late Bishop Leontyne Kelly was standing on a table with a bullhorn directing traffic as excited clergywomen arrived for the bus ride to our meeting site at the Glorietta Baptist Conference Center in Glorietta, New Mexico. On the bus ride, one of our great clergywomen, who was also a distinguished teacher from one of our seminaries, walked the aisle of our bus as we traveled, encouraging and reminding us of the work ahead. Out of the prayer services and working groups in every geographic area of the church, the election of the sister bishops became a reality, Bishops Matthews, Morrison, Kelly, Brown Christopher, Sherer, Zimmerman Raider, Swenson, Kammerer, and Hassinger, just to name a few. They took their places among global leaders. Many others continued to follow. 06:05     Clergywomen gatherings in the United States and across the globe remind us that we must be ready to stand in the gap of leadership for which the world cries out continually. Faithful service demands constant prayer and vigilance while we build partnerships with other clergy and lay colleagues across the church and community. Clergy sisters have gathered in partnership with colleagues from across the connection in worship, study, and strategy sessions to continue the journey towards full inclusion in the ministries of the church. 06:38     Our gathering places were tents of meeting. Our call was to write the vision plainly so that even the person running could see it. We are working hard to do so. With every chapter, we are called to write the next. 06:52     All across the church, clergywomen are working to help shape a church that will continue to be relevant as we face extremely challenging times across the global community. The work can never just be about clergywomen succeeding. However, it reflects a burning desire to see the church realize the power of God at work through all of us. 07:13     The Babylonians had destroyed Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The people felt removed from the sense of God's presence they once knew when the temple stood as a symbol of God's ever present power. Even after they began the process of rebuilding their temple, the work stopped after just a short time because of opposition from the Samaritans. Similarly, there is discouragement across the church today as people seek to experience the power of God in the face of economic distress, anxiety over health care concerns, racial tensions, and terrorist threats at home and abroad. 07:47     Disappointment and fear is the theme of the people in Israel doing the ministry of the Prophet Haggai. Haggai writes to them to challenge them and to encourage them to carry on God's work. In our current troubled world, the feeling is strong that the church has surrounded its leadership to political pundits and self-serving individuals playing in the marketplace of life. The church finds itself facing giants of disbelief, church members and leaders who are out of touch with the historical significance of the roles women have played in moving the church and the society forward for good. 08:22     God raised up the prophet Haggai to call the people back to their task of rebuilding the temple. That is a message I think we could all use today. Haggai reminds us that while some of the people and settings may not look the same, God will remain faithful. Clergywomen have known triumphs and we have faced disappointment. We have realized some of our hopes and dreams. Some churches have received women pastors, and the partnership was very positive. For some, both congregation and pastor experienced unexpected disappointments. Other clergywomen, despite hard work and positive impact in their ministry settings, face the continuing resistance towards women as pastors in local churches. 09:06     Are you discouraged at times? Are you disappointed in your work for the Lord? We may all feel this from time to time. Some of our best hopes and dreams for a ministry may not be realized in every setting. One friend called it facing the impassible mountain. Looking back at the rivers we have crossed and mountains we have climbed, occasional disappointment will not derail us or cause us to lose faith. My mom continues to remind me that this work is God's work. We are invited to share the load. God stands just as ready to bless us today as in years past. God will never leave us nor forsake us. God will meet us in every situation, and will dwell among us and bless us for God's glory. 09:52     Thank you for listening to the WellSprings Journal podcast. Be sure to visit Wellspringsjournal. org to find more resources for the journey.

Francis Asbury (Episode 22).

As the Panama Papers continue to shine a light on the off shore world, Edward Stourton talks to Robert Paterson, Bishop of Soder and Man, about whether tax avoidance is ever morally acceptable. Geoff Bird reports on the little known story of Francis Asbury, the English-born former blacksmith's apprentice who is credited with putting American Methodism on the denominational map. Pope Francis' much anticipated Exhortation on the Family was published Friday. Does it fall short of marking any real change or amount to a call for the transformation in the attitude rather than doctrine of the Church? Edward is joined by Madelaine Teahan, Associate Editor of the Catholic Herald, Bishop Peter Doyle and the Guardian's Joanna Moorhead. There is no change on the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics taking Communion in the Exhortation. But the document does urge couples and the Church to take marriage preparation seriously. Bob Walker reports on what it means and whether it works. In the on-going anti-Semitism row in the Labour party, one issue being raised is about how the term Zionism is used and whether there is confusion about the term. Jonathan Freedland writes for the Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle - he gives his analysis. Edward Stourton interviews Jonathan Luxmoore about his books 'God in the Gulag' which shines fascinating new light on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Communist authorities behind the Iron Curtain. In light of Archbishop Justin Welby's discovery of the identity of his biological father, we ask whether religious faith makes it easier to cope with the kind of shock that could shake your understanding of who you are. Producer: Catherine Earlam Rosemary Dawson Series Producer Amanda Hancox.

River of Life Fellowship

River of Life Fellowship

River of Life Fellowship

River of Life Fellowship

Our Upbeat Bluegrass Gospel version of "I Am Bound For The Promised Land" also known as "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand"  It was a favorite at camp meetings and brush arbors.Hank Williams and Johnny Cash ,as well as many others, have recorded this tune 1.    On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,And cast a wishful eyeTo Canaan’s fair and happy land,Where my possessions lie. Refrain:I am bound for the promised land,I am bound for the promised land;Oh, who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land. 2. O’er all those wide, extended plainsShines one eternal day;There God the Son forever reigns,And scatters night away.3. No chilling winds or poisonous breathCan reach that healthful shore;Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,Are felt and feared no more. 4. Filled with delight my raptured soulWould here no longer stay;Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,Fearless, I’d launch away. Samuel Stennett, pub.1787 Copyright: Public Domain  Miss M. Durham, pub.1835selahpub.com writes:History of this hymn"This well-known hymn by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Stennett (1727­-1795) first appeared in Selection of Hymns, a celebrated hymnal compiled by the Baptist editor John Rippon. Published in 1787, Rippon's hymnal also introduced in its enduring form Edward Perronet's "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name."A native of Exeter, Samuel Stennett spent his childhood in London where his father served a Baptist church as pastor. In 1758, he succeeded his father in the pastorate of the Baptist church in Little Wild Street, London, where he served until his death. A scholarly man, Stennett received a D.D. from King's College, Aberdeen in 1763. Known also as a friend of the reigning monarch, George III, Stennett nonetheless refused political or social opportunities to devote himself to ministry.His prominence among the Dissenting ministers of London afforded occasions to use his influence with political figures on behalf of religious liberty. Stennett authored 39 hymns, five of which appeared in Rippon's Selection (1787). His grandfather, Joseph Stennett, had also been a prominent Dissenting hymn writer, publishing several hymnals reflecting his Puritan-rooted religion of the heart. Samuel Stennett continued the tradition, although with less passionate language of glory and grace than had marked his grandfather's Puritan-influenced notions of Christian experience.Stennett wrote seven stanzas for "On Jordan's Stormy Banks." The hymn is also known by the title Stennett gave it, "Promised Land." Critics have noted that "Promised Land" echoes a well-known hymn by Isaac Watts, "There Is a Land of Pure Delight." More than any other of Stennett's hymns, "Promised Land" found enormous popularity in 19th-century America. Its acceptance by American Methodists and its subsequent use in camp meetings and brush arbors help account for this. The hymn has appeared in each American Methodist hymnal since Francis Asbury included it in his Supplement to the Pocket Hymn Book (1808). Stennett's eight stanzas are generally reduced to three or four, and several of these may be slightly altered. The song found its way into the 1835 Southern Harmony and is part of the American shape note tradition. At some times in American history, evangelicals have reinterpreted Stennett's biblical metaphors with a this-worldly eye toward the promised land just over the horizon on the western frontier."Promised Land" has been set to various tunes. Perhaps the best-known in the United States today is PROMISED LAND, a traditional early-nineteenth-century American melody with a strong resemblance to a once-popular dance tune. William Walker's Southern Harmony attributes the tune to a Miss M. Durham. Rigdon M. McIntosh revised PROMISED LAND and changed it from minor to major tonality. McIntosh also added a refrain. "Promised Land" can be found in American hymnals in major or minor keys and with or without refrains."from:http://www.selahpub.com/Choral/ChoralTitles/425-817-PromisedLand.html © 2012 Shiloh Worship Music COPY FREELY;This Music is copyrighted to prevent misuse, however,permission is granted for non-commercial copying-Radio play permitted- www.shilohworshipmusic.com

sermon transcript Introduction Look with me if you would, at Genesis Chapter 18. We are looking at a most remarkable passage of Scripture, you just heard it read, and it really is a passage that teaches us about faithful prevailing intercessory prayer. One of the great ministries of the church, one of the great privileges of the church, that we can stand in the gap on behalf of those in our generation, and we can intercede as Abraham, our father in faith did. You know, Scripture gives at least 190 exhortations or commands to prayer. Isn't that incredible? One hundred ninety times God has said, “Draw near to me and ask.” In James 5:16 it says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Abraham gives us a display of that in Genesis 18. Or, in 1 John 3 it says “whatever we ask we receive from him.” What an incredible exhortation of prayer that is. And how about this one? John 15:7 says, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” What a blank check from heaven, of course, tempered by the will of God, but why would we want anything that is not in the will of God. And so, we stand, we intercede, we ask, and God has lavished to bless. Matthew 21:22 says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” and many other such exhortations. Prayer is a proven active effectual reality in this world. Now, it is a mystery, and we see that mystery somewhat in the encounter between Abraham and God. God's plan and Abraham's initiative and his view of the thing as he stands on that ridge and looks down over those cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But because it is proven and powerful and effective, and because there are so many commands and exhortations to prayer, the great men and women of God throughout time have taken up this prayer burden and have been faithful with it. Athanasius, for example, prayed five hours every day. Five hours every day. Bernard of Clairvaux would not begin his daily activities unless he had spent at least three hours in prayer. Augustine once set apart 18 months to do nothing but prayer. Now, you can do that when you are a monk and you don't have to hold down a regular job, but that's all he did, 18 months focused on prayer. Charles Simeon devoted the hours from 4 till 8 every morning to prayer. John Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer beginning well before dawn. John Fletcher frequently spent all night in prayer and would greet his friends saying, do I meet you in prayer? In other words, I don't want to interrupt your prayer time. Martin Luther once commented very famously, “I have so much work to do that I have to give myself to an extra amount of prayer, perhaps three hours today.” Oh, that speaks to our busy 21st century, doesn't it? What do we do to prayer when it gets really busy? We pitch it. We don't have time for it. But not Luther. Now you say, “Well, I'm busy.” Now, Luther, he was just running a reformation, the local church pastor, meeting with heads of state, writing letters and the commentaries, and all of that. God’s Intimate Public Revelation to Abraham About Sodom But I know you are busy and so prayer is a challenge for you, and that's the very reason we're looking at Genesis 18 today. Francis Asbury rose each morning at 4 to spend time in prayer. John Calvin, John Knox and Theodore Beza covenanted together that they would hold each other accountable to pray at least two hours every day. And so, we see also in our text this morning, Abraham, our father in faith, in prevailing intercessory prayer, and that is what is in front of us. Now, what is the context of this account? Well, we began last week with Genesis 18, it is I think the context of intimacy with God, that is I think what holds the whole chapter together. We saw last week, the intimate fellowship meal as the Lord was there, I believe, with two angels and Abraham set before them a meal. And so, there is an intimate fellowship meal there, God with Abraham. And then, also God's intimate personal revelation to Abraham concerning Sarah, that this time next year he would return and Sarah would have a son, Isaac. Angelic Mission to Sodom and Gomorrah And so, there is an intimate personal revelation there, and so that is the context, and now thirdly, we see this intimate public revelation to Abraham, this time about Sodom. Look at Verses 16-21, it says “When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.’” Verse 20, “Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’” And so, there is this angelic mission to Sodom and Gomorrah, the two men look down towards Sodom and they go on their way. This is God initiating a personal investigation into the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah. God says, “I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry, then I will know.” This is what we call anthropomorphic language in which God kind of is speaking like we do. I'm going to take a trip and find out and see. We see this again and again in Genesis. You remember in Genesis 3, how Adam and Eve heard the sound of God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, is what one translation says. It's this sense of the physicality of God or God kind of coming down to our level in a way we can understand. See the same thing in Genesis 11 with the Tower of Babel, you remember? You remember how God is looking down at this mighty tower that is rising up to the heavens, and God says, “Let's go way down and see that tiny little tower that they're making.” And so, down they travel to see. They had a long way to go to reach him. But it is again, this anthropomorphic language, and we see the same thing here, we'll go down and see if the outcry is as great, and if not, I will know. So, there's a sense of immediacy here, a sense of involvement, God is intimately involved in this judgment. Now, it is not because God was near-sighted. It wasn't like he had to get closer to see. Have you ever seen somebody near-sighted and they're trying to read and they have to hold it just at the right length, or they have to get a little closer and squint? Oh, that isn't God. God knew everything, He knew every inclination of the heart of Sodom, He knew the whole history, He knew all of their wicked deeds, He was intimately aware of every filthy excruciating detail. Job says in Job 31:4, “Does he not see my ways and count my every step?” And it says in Proverbs 5:21, “For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths.” Why then does God speak like this? Why this kind of language? I will go down and see, and then, if not, I will know. Well, I think the first purpose is to show God's absolute commitment to justice to Abraham and to us. What He is going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah is noteworthy, to say the least. The cities are going to be erased by fire and brimstone, and immediately the sense of injustice may rise up, as it did with Abraham, and hence the intercession later on in this text. And so, God wants to show above all things a commitment absolutely to justice. God does nothing in wrath and judgment except what is deserved, and He is meticulously careful about preserving his reputation as a just judge. And so, he's going to investigate openly and clearly. It says in Romans 3:4, “Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: ‘So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.’” And it says later in that same Chapter, “. . . so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.” And so, God uses this kind of language to show, “I have thoroughly and completely investigated this matter, and this is what the matter calls for. I have looked into it, and I am not going by hearsay, I will know intimately the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.” That's the first reason. The second reason is, I think, to involve the angels. He himself doesn't go, but through the two angels he does the investigation. Now realize that God doesn't need to use the angels, but He chooses to, and why? Because they are fellow servants with him. They are involved in the redemptive history as it unfolds, God wanted them involved. You know, interesting text in Revelation 19:10, John writing the Book of Revelation, after he had received this overwhelming vision from an angel. God had sent the angel to show His servants that says what must soon take place. John says “At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!’” Did you hear what the angel called himself? A fellow servant. “I'm just doing a job; I'm serving just like you.” The Outcry Against Wickedness: How Long Must God Bear It And so, God wanted to involve the angels and so he sends the two of them down, and we'll see what happens to them in the next Chapter. But for this reason, we see this language and the outcry against wickedness. There's an outcry coming up from Sodom and Gomorrah, a clamor of wickedness, the boisterous noise of parties, or screams of wounded brawlers who are too drunk to know what's happened to them, or groans of sick drunkards or squeals of wild laughter, even worse, the outcry of blood from the ground of innocent victims. That's the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, and God will investigate. He will come and see if the outcry, if their deeds are as bad as the outcry, is it true? God’s Deceptive Silence And here ends very soon, God's misunderstood silence. You know, the wicked of the earth misunderstand God, don't they? When day after day is like the previous day, it seems as though God consents. The Scripture says that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” and they assume that there is no God. God says in another place, “you thought I was entirely like you because I didn't do anything but remain silent in heaven. And you thought I didn't exist, or you thought I was like you, wicked.” It is misunderstood silence. Rather, God is patient and He is waiting. His quiet encounter with Abraham is actually the calm before the storm of Genesis 19. And there comes a day, a day in which all things are made right. God’s Desire for Intimacy with His People We see also in this text, God's incredible desire for intimacy with his people. God cannot hide from Abraham what He is about to do. Look at Verse 17, “Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?’” Now in Shakespeare's plays and in other plays, you get these things called soliloquies, an actor or actress goes off to a part of the stage or perhaps is completely alone on a stage, and they just speak for a while to the audience. It is the playwright's way of letting you know into the mind of the actor to find out what they're really thinking. And so, you get these soliloquies, because we can't read the mind of the actor or actress. And so, Hamlet gives a soliloquy about whether he wants to go on living or not, or other actors or actresses in these plays, they give these soliloquies, and this way we can read the minds of the actors or actresses. That's exactly what's going on here. It's interesting that not only can God not hide from Abraham what He is about to do, He couldn't hide from us what He was thinking at the time. And so, through the pen of Moses, He says, “I want you to know the deliberations that went on in my mind right before this prayer encounter. I can't hide from Abraham what I'm about to do.” Realize that God is under no obligation to share a thing with us. He doesn't need to speak to us, He doesn't need to tell us a thing. He could have just erased Sodom and Gomorrah, He created it and everything in it. He doesn't owe us an explanation. Nebuchadnezzar said this in Daniel 4:35, “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” No one has the right to question God. And do you sense that Abraham feels that too? Again and again, he's saying, “Oh Lord, don't be angry with me,” or “I'm only dust and ashes.” And so, there's this sense, I don't have the right to ask these questions. But you see, God opens himself up, He reveals Himself to us. It says in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” In other words, there are two categories of things in the mind of God, the things concealed, and the things revealed. And he decided that this judgement on Sodom, he would reveal beforehand, ahead of time. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” It says in Amos 3:7, “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. That's an incredible thing, God wants us to know. He wants to open himself up, He wants intimacy with you. And so, He has told you the most vital things you need to know about today and about the future in the Scripture. He's opened up his mind and his heart; He has told you what's going to happen. Jesus Christ is coming back someday. The second coming of Christ, He is coming. And on that day, there will be a great judgment, and just like Abraham called God here, the judge of all the earth, He is the judge of all the earth and you will stand before him. More on that in a moment. You see, God reveals his secrets to us through His servants, the prophets. Now, what are the reasons for intimacy? Well, we've talked about this and we discussed it last week, but it bears repeating and looking at in detail. Look at Verses 18-19, it says, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.” Verse 19, “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” God has a generational or multi-generational view. He's looking down the road, and He has a purpose that He is unfolding here. God’s Reasons for Intimacy: from Generation to Generation Now, what is the ultimate purpose? What is the focus of the redemptive plan of God? Is it not Jesus Christ? Is Jesus not the focus of everything God is doing? It says that he will become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through Abraham. And so, Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham, has come to bless the earth. But God knows there is a long journey to travel from here to there, and so he describes how that redemptive plan is going to unfold. It isn't here yet. The time for Jesus is still 2,000 years away. And so, there's a plan here, Abraham will become a great and powerful nation. At this time next year, I will return and Isaac will be born. And so, He has got a view down the road, and so, He has got to reveal Himself. And what does he reveal? Well, He says, first of all, “I have chosen Abraham so that he will direct his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham, what He has promised him.” There's a chain here, like a chain link, one after the other. First personal election, “I have chosen him.” The end result, all nations on earth will be blessed. But in the meantime, what? Well, “I've chosen him so that he will direct his family after him, to keep the way of the Lord, so that the Lord may bring about what he has purposed.” And so, we must be faithful just as Abraham was in training Isaac. We must be faithful with our children. I'll say more to fathers at the end of the message, but this is such a direct word to us, isn't it? The need for fathers to be faithful, to entrust to their children a godly heritage. And so, part of that is that God wants Abraham to know what he's doing in Sodom and Gomorrah. It wasn't just an anomaly of Nature, it wasn't just an accidental earthquake that just happened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, no, this is direct judgment from God. And it's important for Abraham and his descendants after to know the heart of God in this matter. It's important so that they could be warned and protected from sin. God’s Perfect Holiness and Wrath It says in Ephesians 5:3-7, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person−such a man is an idolater−has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.” Don't you think He wants us to know that? God’s Intimate Intercession with Abraham God Initiates Prayer We are Abraham's children by faith. And so, it's important that God draw near to us and warn us concerning the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah. That is why he reveals himself intimately to Abraham. He involves Abraham; He initiates prayer with Abraham. I think it's important as we look at this prayer encounter between Abraham and God, that God was both the Alpha and the Omega of this prayer encounter. It was God who drew near. And so, He opens up his heart and He says to Abraham, look at Verses 20-21, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin is so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. And if not, I will know.” And so, God reveals Himself, He shows himself to Abraham. You know that God doesn't need to use angels and He doesn't need to use people. He didn't need to use Noah's ark to save the animals, but He chose to do so. He involved Noah and his hammer and his saws and his sons in His redemptive plan. He didn't need to do anything with Moses. He could have rescued the people directly without Moses, but He chose to use Moses, his staff and his leadership; He chose to involve people. And in the same way, God doesn't need to send missionaries to the ends of the earth. He doesn't need to send missionaries to East Asia, He doesn't need to send missionaries to Greece or to Africa, but He has chosen to involve us in His work. And one of the number one ways we can be involved with God is, the same way Abraham was here, through intercessory prayer, that God initiates. Realize that we would have no access, no prayer life, if God had not granted it. It says in Verse 22, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord." God looked at Abraham and saw properly what he was. He was a sinner, saved by grace. He was justified by faith in a Christ who would come later and realize that none of us has access into the very presence of the holy throne room of God, except that Jesus shed His blood. He provided for us a new and living way into the throne of grace, and with it a command to come near, to draw near and let our consciences be sprinkled by the blood of Christ, to not stay distant. And we know that that's the problem in intercessory prayer. We are sinners and He is holy. It says in Isaiah 59, 1 and 2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear." Only in Christ is that taken away, that obstacle to intercessory prayer. And so, Abraham stands before the Lord. The Lord has initiated, and Abraham is ready, and he stands before the Lord, to intercede. Abraham’s Three Great Concerns in Prayer There are three great concerns on Abraham's mind as he stands before them, and they are not equal. One is greater than the next and the next is greater than the third. Abraham's first and greatest concern is for the honor and glory of God and for his reputation as a just judge. That's his first and greatest concern. Abraham's second concern is for the righteous in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. That's his second concern. Abraham's third concern is for the city generally, as created by God, and a concern that the city be spared on behalf of the righteous, that the wicked might have more time to repent. Those three are not equal in Abraham's mind. First and foremost, that God's reputation might be established. Look at Verse 25, this is Abraham speaking to God, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you!" And then he says, a fascinating thing, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" I was in a class at MIT, it was a Bible class. I have mentioned it before. I took two Bible classes at MIT. Just a word to those of you that are interested in pursuing theological education, MIT is not the place to go. Okay. If you're interested in engineering or pure science, whatever, look at it. It might be for you. But theology, no. And so, I took these two classes with some other Christian friends, and there are two different classes on the Bible, blasphemy and heresy 101, blasphemy and heresy 102, first semester, second semester. And the professor, it seemed like his number one job was to separate us from any confidence that the Bible was actually the inspired word of God, and it seemed like every class, all it was, was just finding details and issues in which he was bringing up problems with the Bible. And one of the things he brought up was Genesis 18:25, I'll never forget it. He said, "Now, it's an interesting question as Abraham stands before God and he says, ‘Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?’” It's almost like there is a standard of rightness above God, and that God needs to bow the neck to the standard of righteousness, that God has got to yield to it, He's got to follow the rules, too. Now, that's an interesting thought, isn't it? Is there a standard of righteousness above God, that God has to follow, too? Does He have to meet that standard or else He's not righteous? Well, let's put it this way. God is the standard of righteousness and God cannot behave contrary to His own nature. That's the issue, Abraham wants God to behave according to his own nature. That's all. Now, where did Abraham himself get the sense of what's right and wrong? Is it not because he was created in the image of God? And, therefore, is this not the moon reflecting rays back to the sun that gave it? The moon has no light of its own, only a reflected light. It came from the sun to begin with. And so here is this created being, created in the image of God, speaking back to God concerning righteousness. “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?” God does right all the time, everything He does is right, just as everything God does is loving, because God is love. Understand, God is not merely loving. You and I can be loving. We're not always loving, but we can be loving; but we cannot be love. That's something only God can be. And, we can behave righteously, but we cannot be righteousness. That's God. “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?” That is Abraham's first concern, that the judge of all the earth's reputation as a righteous judge would be established here. Abraham's second concern is the righteous in the city. People misunderstand here. They say that he's interceding for lost people. Indirectly, he is because there's a concern for sparing the city. Would you spare the city for the sake of the righteous? You understand that. And so, the city is in his mind, but his request is focused on whom? Focused on the righteous. Are you going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from you, to do that. And so, his concerns are first, God's reputation as a just judge. Secondly, the salvation of the righteous. And who does he have in mind there? Well, like they say, blood is thicker than water. He's concerned about his nephew, Lot. Is Lot going to be swept away or is Lot going to be saved? I think he's counting Lot's family among the righteous. He's got a wife, he's got. . . If you start to add them up, you could get up to 10 people. I think he got to that point and said, "Okay, well, we've got Lot's family." Well, apparently not, because the city got destroyed and God had promised He would not destroy it if there were 10 righteous people found in it. But there was Lot. And so, Abraham was concerned for the salvation of the righteous, and then thirdly, concerned with the city itself. He is interceding that the city would be spared for the sake of the righteous. God is concerned about that, too, because they are His created beings. It says in Jonah 4:11, "But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" Yeah, He's concerned about the cattle because He made them, but He's especially concerned about the 120,000 Ninevites who needed to repent. And so, there is a concern in that order. Now, as you look at this time of intercession, it's really quite remarkable. Someone said it's like kind of a Middle Eastern bazaar, where there's a kind of a dickering back and forth, there's a bargaining. I don't think that's what's going on here, at all. I think there's a passion and a fear on Abraham's part. Do you see the fear? How he's afraid that he's asking too much, he's venturing forward timidly, kind of a step at a time? I think that's what's going on here. I don't think it's that he's trying to bargain with God. There is no such thing. Abraham’s Character in Prayer And as we look at Abraham's revealed character in this prayer, we see a number of things. First, I see faith. It's not directly mentioned, but what is faith but a response to the word of God. Faith doesn't generate anything. Faith responds to God's revealed Word. And so, God unfolds his purpose concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham responds in faith by praying about it. Secondly, we do see intimacy, look at Verse 22, it says, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord." There's a sense of standing before God, an intimate relationship. And then in Verse 23 it says, "Then Abraham approached him and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’" Do you see the intimacy in Verse 23? Abraham drew near to God. Oh, is this only perfected through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross? Only by what He did on the cross, when He shed His blood and died, can there really be Immanuel. God with us or near us or in us, and us close to Him as well. It says in Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” Let us get close to God. Let us lay aside everything that hinders intimacy with God. So, we see intimacy. We see also compassion. He is concerned about what is going to happen to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a compassion there. He feels their pain and their agony before it even happens. That is what motivates his prayer. And so, he is compassionate. He is also bold, isn't he? Do you see boldness in this? Boy, is he courageous. He just keeps coming at it again and again, he even feels it. Look at Verse 25, he says, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" What a bold thing to say to God. And then he feels it in Verse 27, "Then Abraham spoke up again: ‘Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes.’" Do you see the boldness in prayer? Do you see also the humility? He calls himself dust and ashes. Is that hyperbole? Is that beyond what is really the case? Don't you remember what God said to Adam? "Dust you are and to dust you will return. I made you out of the dust of the earth." And Abraham accepted that, didn't he? He said, "I'm just dust, I'm just ashes." And so, there is a sense of humility and there is a sense of perseverance, isn't there? There is a relentlessness here−50 people, 45 people, 40 people, 30 people, 20 people, 10 people−six times he comes back to God with the same matter. Oh, this convicts me in my prayer. Are you this persistent in your prayer? When you ask and don't receive right away, do you keep on asking or do you give up quickly? Abraham kept on going, kept pressing on, persevering in prayer. And then finally, there's that reverence, the sense that Abraham standing there, is standing before the judge of all the earth, and now he's standing on behalf of some others. He is interceding on behalf of some others, but someday, he will stand himself before the judge of all the earth and he will be judged. And so, there is a reverence there, a sense of humility. This is the character of Abraham in prayer, faith-filled, intimate, compassionate, bold, humble, persevering, reverent. That's the way we need to pray, isn't it? That's the way we need to pray. Abraham’s “Failure” in Prayer? Now, I want to take up a matter concerning Abraham's failure in prayer. Abraham's failure in prayer you might say, well, there is a godly man, E. M. Bounds who wrote a lot of books on prayer, perhaps you have seen them, “Purpose in Prayer,” or “Prayer and Praying Men,” some of these things. He was a godly man, lived in the 19th century, Christ-like in his demeanor, Methodist pastor in the 19th century in Tennessee and Alabama. He woke every morning, 4 a.m., for prayer. Once when he was visiting a friend and his family in Brooklyn, New York, the family was awakened by sounds in the middle of the night, it was 3 in the morning, and it was E. M. Bounds, crying out for the lost and for the needy in prayer. This is the way he was. Prayer just saturated his life. But as you sometimes get with that kind of theological approach with the Methodist in particular, there was too much, I think, a man-centered focus in prayer. And listen to what E. M. Bounds wrote about Abraham's encounter with God here, in Genesis 18. He said, "Sodom's fate was for a while, stayed by Abraham's praying, and was almost entirely relieved by the humility and insistence of the praying of this man who believed strongly in prayer and who knew how to pray." Listen to this, "Perhaps the failure to ultimately rescue Sodom from her doom of destruction was due to Abraham's optimistic view of the spiritual condition of things in that city. It might have been possible, who knows, that if Abraham had entreated God once more and asked Him to spare the city if even one righteous man was found there, for Lot's sake, He might have heeded Abraham's request." Now, what is the basic idea? Abraham stopped too soon. He should have kept praying because we know there was one righteous man there, 2 Peter tells us that Lot was righteous, and so the city would have been spared. And so, there is almost a subtle blaming of Abraham for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now E. M. Bounds would say, "Certainly not, because it was their own wickedness, but perhaps God might have extended the stay of righteous or of grace and mercy if he had only asked one more time.” Abraham’s Success in Prayer Well, I think there could be some confirmation of this in Abraham's own heart the next morning. Look over at Genesis 19, the very next chapter, 27 and 28, it says, "Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord." So, the next morning he goes to the place where he prayed. Verse 28, "He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace." Have you ever felt like that was your prayer life? You asked for something and you get exactly the opposite, it seems, of what you asked for. And so, it seems as though perhaps he felt he had failed in prayer. But did he really fail? I think not. There is a clear statement, the very next one in Verse 29 of Chapter 19, look what it says, "So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived." He remembered Abraham. I don't think He just remembered that Abraham was related to him, I think directly, it's connecting to the previous chapter. He remembered his intercessory prayer; it was in response to the prayer that Lot was rescued, that he was delivered. And also, did Abraham get what he was asking for? Were all the righteous saved from Sodom and Gomorrah? Seems that way. He got the second thing he asked for, namely that all the righteous would be delivered. They were. And actually, some who were not righteous were delivered out, Lot's daughters came out with him and his wife, although she didn't make it the whole way. We'll get to that, next time. But some that were not righteous made it out, too, so he got even more than he asked for. And at the moment when Abraham was standing there on the ridge, looking at the smoke rising up from Sodom and Gomorrah, where was Lot at that moment but in Zoar, that little city, safe with his daughters. God had answered his prayer even though he didn't know it. The whole problem I have with E. M. Bounds' approach is that, he forgot who the alpha and the omega of prayer is. Isn't that the problem? Who began this prayer encounter? God did. Yes. And who ended it? Well, let's look and see, Verse 33. It says, "When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home." Who ended the prayer time? God did. He stopped at 10. Right? Now, when a servant is standing before a king, who gets to end the encounter? Who gets to turn and walk away? Is it not the king? And what happens to the servant, if the servant turns and walks away, ending the encounter? He might get in trouble, serious trouble. And so, the servants stood before the king until the king was done, and the king was done at Verse 33, and He went back and ended the prayer encounter. It was God's purpose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, he did not wait. But one more thing. Was not little Zoar spared in the exact way that Abraham had in mind? Lot went out to Zoar, and there was one righteous person in the little city of Zoar, and it was spared. All of it was spared because of Sodom. Now what, because of Abraham. Application What application can we take from this? Well, more than anything. Prevailing, passionate, intercessory prayer. How many of you would say you are satisfied with your prayer lives? How many of you can read this through and say, "Now, that's what I do on a regular basis?" I have been deeply convicted by Genesis 18, and I have been convicted on behalf of our church. Can I urge you to take part in our corporate prayer life with our church? There is power in corporate prayer, there is power in coming together. Be at the next quarterly corporate prayer meeting, Sunday evening, the end of the month, be there. Pour out your heart to God in prayer for mission work and for lost people around you, and for the righteous people you know that they would stand firm in the day of temptation. Be there and pray. Be there with us on Sunday morning. We pray every morning, 9 o'clock in the parlor. I like to see that place so packed out, we have to come in here. I guess you got music, things going, we will work it out. Just pack it out, let's come and pray. We pray for half an hour, for the service and for mission work and for anything that we feel led to pray for. Come and pray at 9 o'clock, pray on Wednesday evening, but then let's fill out into other times. Yes, you can pray on Tuesdays, with brothers and sisters in Christ, you can get together and pray. Let's intercede. Let's be bold and courageous. Let me speak also, to fathers. I have said this last week, I will say it again. Fathers, take responsibility for the spiritual welfare of your homes, take responsibility. Even if your kids are grown, still you have an influence over your grandkids. Fathers, take the lead as Abraham, our father in faith did. And mothers, you too. Parents are entrusted with the responsibility of training their children in godliness, the Book of Proverbs is clear on this. And so, have a multigenerational view. Lead your children to walk in a way that is right, don't leave it to the church ministry to do it. We are not here for that. We are here to exhort you to be faithful in your calling. And finally, all of you, but especially those of you who sit here today and don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, think of what Abraham said in Verse 25, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" This is the God before whom each one of us will stand on Judgment Day, and only by the blood of Christ, will we survive that scrutiny, only by the blood of Christ, will we not be condemned for every careless word we have spoken throughout life. Jesus shed His blood, that we might be able to stand before the judge of all the earth, blameless and unafraid. Trust in Him today. And those of you who have already trusted in Christ, remember, there will come that day when you stand and give an account for your life, for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

This is episode 124-Decline.Following the Great Awakening, which produced a deep-seated sense of Faith in so many Americans prior to the Revolutionary War, as the new nation organized itself around its new national identity, it realized something unique was taking place. A genuine religious pluralism had taken root. That was very different from the centuries of conflict that marked the Europe their ancestors had come from.There are several reasons for the religious pluralism of the United States. But when we speak of pluralism at that point in history, let's make sure what we mean is a lack of the establishment of a specific Christian denomination as a National or Federal Church. 18th Century pluralism didn't extend to other major religions. There were no Buddhist or Hindu temples; no Islamic mosques nor Shinto shrines. Americans were Christians, if not of the committed stripe, at least nominally.The first reason for the religious pluralism of the US was immigration after 1690. It brought a mixture of people with various faiths so that no group was dominant. The Quakers of Pennsylvania opposed a formal church structure which prevented the rise of a State church there. Please note this: While the first Amendment prohibited the FEDERAL govt from establishing a National Church, there was no ban on the States establishing a State Church. Several states in fact HAD State churches. But the Quaker dominance of Pennsylvania resisted an established church. Their presence in New Jersey contributed to the religious mixture in that colony, and Pennsylvania's control over Delaware during most of the colonial period meant freedom of religion there as well. French Huguenots took refuge in several colonies. Having suffered brutal persecution back home, they had no desire to persecute others.A second wave of immigrants in 1700, consisted mostly of some 200,000 Germans. While most were either Lutheran or Reformed, several smaller sects were also present. Most shared the Pietistic emphasis on a deeply felt personal faith. They had no desire to dominate others' religious persuasion. These Germans settled in Pennsylvania and northern New York.Last came a wave of about a quarter-million Scotch-Irish from Northern Ireland. Nearly all Presbyterians, they'd been persecuted by the Anglican Church of Ireland. They spread throughout the Middle & Southern colonies. By 1760, the population of the colonies was about 2½ million. A third born in a foreign land.A second influence favoring religious pluralism was that many of the colonies were Proprietary, meaning they were business ventures. For the sake of the business, religious feuds needed to be tamped down lest they prove a distraction to the colony's profitability. Even where a specific church or denomination was favored, large numbers of people from others faiths meant the requirement to get along for the greater good.Third, the revivals we looked at in the last episode proved a leveling influence. They crossed denominational lines as if there was no distinction whatever. Revival preachers and promoters universally stressed the equality of all in the sight of God.Fourth, the Western frontier was another leveler. Pioneers were self-reliant individualists or they didn't survive. In case you haven't noticed, rugged individualism and religious institutionalism don't mix. Frontiersmen were suspicious of and opposed to attempts by them City-folk back East asserting their will over the Frontier – in any form, including dictating what church would be built where and led by who.Fifth, following the revivals of the 18th century, spiritual apathy began to grow once more. The churches that had filled during the Great Awakening began to empty. And without new ministers in training, it meant more churches were left without gifted leaders. Let me be clear—While the Frontier resisted Eastern denominations reaching into their realm, they still wanted their own churches. But the rapid evolution of the Western Frontier meant churches weren't built or manned quickly enough. The Frontier became a largely unchurch region.  In proportion to the population, probably more than anywhere else in Christendom during the first third of the 18th century, the Western frontier of the British colonies was the least churched.Sixth, the philosophy of natural rights percolating for a couple of centuries coalesced during the Enlightenment. It now began to influence many. One of those natural rights people came to accept was the privilege of deciding what religion they'd follow. John Locke's Letters on Toleration argued for the separation of church and state and a voluntary religious affiliation for any and all. Most leaders of the generation that saw the American Revolutionary, such as Thomas Jefferson, were enamored with this philosophy and were active in bringing down the church establishment in Virginia soon after the new nation won its independence.When the Revolution began, the Anglican church suffered greatly because many of its ministers remained Loyalists who supported England. When the war was over, there were few Anglican ministers left in the country and many churches had been destroyed.In all, the disestablishment of religion seemed a foregone conclusion in the United States. With the founding of the new nation, one after another, State churches toppled. The last to go was Congregationalism in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts in the first half of the 19th century.I realize the narrative I've just shared appears to challenge the picture some modern apologists paint of the role of Christianity in the Early American Republic. A deeper look makes it clear there's no challenge at all. To say the United States saw a disestablishment of churches doesn't mean Americans were irreligious. On the contrary; remember what we saw in the last episode. The Great Awakening had such a huge impact on the colonies that for a time, to be an American meant to be a Christian. And not just as a default label derived at by the process of elimination. You know, that attitude some have that says, “Well, I'm not a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim; so I must be a Christian.” Coming out of the Great Awakening, the American identity was one that was thoroughly and sincerely Christian of the pietistic stripe; where having a personal testimony of the experience of being born again was paramount.So à IF there was so much religious diversity and agitation against an established Church during the 18th century, what were the attitudes of the different denominations toward the Revolution?As noted, Anglicans in the Church of England were divided, but dominated by a loyalist majority. In the north, Anglicans leaned heavily toward the loyalist cause. In the south, many of the great planters, men like George Washington, favored the Revolutionary cause. Congregationalists gave enthusiastic support to the Revolution, their ministers preached fervent sermons favoring of the patriot cause.Presbyterians leaned that way as well in a continuation of the old conflict back home between themselves and Anglicans. Presbyterian John Witherspoon, was a signer of the Articles of Confederation, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Lutherans also supported the Revolution under the leadership of the Muhlenbergs. Though divided, Roman Catholics were generally patriots.Baptists supported the Revolution because they felt the cause of separation of church and state was at stake. They believed a British victory would bring a round of new political control and a tightening on the religious scene.Methodists were suspect because at the beginning of the war Wesley urged neutrality. Then colonial preachers came out in support of the Revolution. Although Quakers, Mennonites, and Moravians were pacifists, most of them were in sympathy with the Revolution and some joined the army.The Revolution dissolved the ties between many religious groups in America and their spiritual relatives in Europe. This meant the need for new organizations in America. Though the Anglican church had been handed a serious setback, it didn't completely evacuate the new Nation. William White and Samuel Seabury attempted to rebuild the Anglican church after the war under the new label of the Protestant Episcopal Church.Loosed from English Methodism, in 1784 Methodists organized as the Methodist Episcopal Church, under the leadership of Francis Asbury. That same year, American Roman Catholics ended their affiliation with the British Bishop. In 1789, John Carroll became the first Roman Catholic bishop, with Baltimore as his See. The Baptists formed a General Committee in 1784. And the Presbyterians in Philadelphia drew up a constitution for their church at the same time as the national Constitution was being formed in 1787.The Revolutionary War proved to be hard on religious life in America. Because most local churches supported the Revolution, when the British took an area, they often poured out their wrath on houses of worship. Churches were destroyed when they were used as barracks, hospitals, and storehouses of munitions. Pastors and congregations were absorbed in the cause of the Revolution rather than in building up the churches. French deism and its philosophical cousin atheism became fashionable among certain elements of American society because of the alliance with France. Rationalism took control of colleges and other intellectual centers. In some schools, there was hardly a student who'd admit to being a Christian.Conditions were so bad during the years when the Constitution was being forged, politicians and ministers alike virtually gave up hope for the role of religion in American society. Bishop Samuel Provost of the Episcopal Diocese of New York saw the situation as so hopeless, he ceased to function. A committee of Congress reported on the desperate state of lawlessness on the frontier. Of a population of five million, the United States had 300,000 drunkards, burying 15,000 a year. In 1796, George Washington agreed with a friend that national affairs were leading to a crisis he was unable to see the outcome of.The closing years of the 18th C were dark. But its always darkest just before the dawn.

This 139th episode is titled Evangementalism,We've spent a couple of episodes laying out the genesis of Theological Liberalism, and concluded the last episode with a brief look at the conservative reaction to it in what's been called Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism was one of the most important movements of the 20th C. The label comes from that which lies at the center of the movement, devotion to an orthodox and traditional understanding of the Evangel, that is, the Christian Gospel - the Good News of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.While Evangelicalism is used today mainly to describe the theological movement that came about as a reaction to Protestant theological liberalism, the term can be applied all the way back to the 1st C believers who referred to themselves as “People of the Gospel,” the Evangel. The term was resurrected by Reformers to call themselves “evangelicals” before identifying as Protestants or any of the other labels used for protestant denominations today.The modern flavor of Evangelicalism came about as a merging of European Pietism and revivals among Methodists in England. We might even locate the origin of modern Evangelicalism in the First Great Awakening of the mid-18th C. Its midwives were people like Whitefield, Tennent, Freylinghuysen, and of course Jonathan Edwards.Since major stress of all these was the need for a conversion experience and spiritual new birth, revivalism and an emphasis on the task of evangelism have been front and center in Evangelicalism.As we've seen in a past episode, the First Great Awakening was followed a century later by the Second which began in the United States and spread to Europe, then the rest of the world and had a huge impact on how Christians viewed their Faith. What's remarkable about the Second Great Awakening, is that it came at a time when many church leaders lamented the low state of the Church in Western Civilization. Christianity's enemies gleefully wrote its obituary. Theological Liberalism helped to push the Faith toward an early grave. But the Second Great Awakening literally shook North American and Europe to their core. A wave of missionaries went out across the globe as a result, spreading the Faith to places no church had existed for hundreds of years, and in some cases, ever before.In newly settled regions on the American frontier, Evangelicalism was carried out in week-long “camp meetings.” Think of a modern concert with multiple bands. Camp meetings were like that, except in place of bands playing music were preachers passionately preaching the Gospel. Might not sound too appealing to our modern sensibilities, but the lonely pioneers of the frontier turned out in large crowds. They'd been too busy building homesteads to consider constructing frontier churches. But now they returned home to do that very thing.One of the largest of these camp meetings took place at Cane Ridge in Kentucky in August 1801. Upwards of 20,000 gathered to listen to Protestant preachers of all stripes.Methodist minister Francis Asbury was just one of several circuit-riders who carried the Gospel all over the frontier. Both Baptists and Methodists worked tirelessly to bring the Gospel to blacks. But the fierce racism of the time refused to integrate congregations. Separate churches were plated for black congregations, of which there were many. In the early 19th C, Richard Allen left the Methodist Church to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In the US, it wasn't long before Evangelical Baptists and Methodists outnumbered older denominations of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, groups where theological liberalism had infiltrated.Charles Finney was an attorney-turned-revivalist who transferred the excitement and energy of the rural camp-meetings to the urban centers of the American Northeast. An innovator, Finney encouraged the newly converted to share the story of how they came to the Faith – called ‘giving your testimony.' He set what he called an “anxious bench” near the front of rooms where he spoke as a place where those who wanted prayer or to make a profession of faith in Christ could sit. That eventually turned into the modern ‘altar call' that's a standard fixture of many Evangelical churches today.By the start of the American Civil War in the mid-19th C, Evangelicalism was the predominant religious position of the American people. In an address delivered 1873, Rev. Theodore Woolsey, one-time president of Yale could say, without the least bit of controversy; “The vast majority of people believe in Christ and the Gospel. Christian influences are universal. Our civilization and intellectual culture are built on that foundation.”While there are many brands, flavors, and emphases inside modern Evangelicalism, it's safe to characterize an Evangelical as someone who holds to several core beliefs: those being à1)  The authority and sufficiency of Scripture2)  The uniqueness of salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ,3)  The need for personal conversion4)  And the urgency of evangelismFurther refining of Evangelicalism took place when there was a debate over the first of its core doctrines – the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. This is where Fundamentalism diverged from Evangelicalism. The other three core distinctives of Evangelicalism all rest on the authority and sufficiently of the Bible. And while Evangelicalism began as a reaction to theological liberalism, some of the ideas of that liberalism crept into some Evangelical's view of Scripture.You see, it's one thing to say Scripture is authoritative and sufficient and another to then say the entire Bible is Scripture.  Is the Bible God's Word, or does it just contain God's Word? Do we need scholars and those properly educated to tell us what is in fact Scripture and what's filler? Are the actual WORDS God's Words, or do the words need to be taken together collectively so that it's not the words but the meaning they convey that makes for God's authoritative message?Some Evangelical leaders noticed their peers were moving to a position that said the Bible wasn't so much God's Word as it contained God's Message. While they weren't as extreme as the Liberal Theologians, they effectively ended up in the same place. This debate goes on in the Evangelical church today and continues to be the source of much unrest.Conservative Evangelicals started linking the authority of Scripture to the doctrine of inerrancy; that is, belief the Bible's original writings contained no errors, and that because of the laborious process of transmission of the texts over time, while we can't say our modern translations are perfect or without any error, they are virtually inerrant; they are trustworthy versions of the originals.At the dawn of the 20th C, Princeton Theological Seminary became the epicenter of this debate as a leading defender of the authority of the Bible. It had long been an advocate for the infallibility of Scripture under such luminaries as Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, his son, AA Hodge, and BB Warfield. In a seminal essay on the doctrine of Inspiration in the Princeton Review, AA Hodge and BB Warfield defined inspiration as producing the “absolute infallibility” of Scripture. They said the autographs, the original writings of the Bible were free from error, not just in regard to theological matters, but in contradiction to what theological liberalism claimed, they were without error in regard to ALL their assertions, including those touching science and history.The theological liberalism coming from Europe had a mixed reception in the US at the outset of the 20th C. At first, most churches remained conservative and blissfully unaware of the slow sea-change taking place in the intellectual centers of American universities and seminaries. Battle lines were drawn between liberals and conservatives who were branded with a new label = Fundamentalists. The battle they carried out in the hallowed halls of academia soon spilled over into the pews. It was referred to as the contest between modernists and fundamentalists.While modernists embraced a host of varying ideologies, they shared two presuppositions.First, they urged, Christianity must be reframed in light of new insights; meaning the tenants of Protestant Liberalism.Second, the Faith had to be liberated from the cultural encrustations of traditionalism that had obscured the REAL MEANING of the Bible. What that effectively meant was that ALL and ANY traditional beliefs about what the Bible said was no longer valid. It was a knee-jerk rejection of conservatism.Though the term Fundamentalism wasn't coined until 1920, it flowed from the 1910 publication The Fundamentals. It was a synthesis of different conservative Protestants who united to battle the Modernists who seemed to be taking over Evangelicalism. Fundamentalists banded together to launch a counteroffensive.There were 2 streams of the early Fundamentalist movement.One was intellectual fundamentalism led by J. Gresham Machen [Gres'am May-chen] and his Calvinist peers at Princeton. [the ‘h' in Gresham is silent!]The other was populist fundamentalism led by CI Schofield who produced the best-selling Scofield Reference Bible which contained his expansive notes and laid out a dispensationalism many found appealing.Other notable fundamentalist leaders were RA Torrey, DL Moody, Billy Sunday, and the Holiness Movement that moved in several denominations, most notably the Nazarenes.While the intellectual and populist streams of fundamentalism attempted to unite in their opposition to modernism, there were simply too many doctrinal differences between all the various groups inside the movement to allow for a concerted strategy in dealing with Liberalism. As a result, Modernists were able to continue their infiltration and take-over of the intellectual centers of the Faith.In reaction to modernists, in 1910, a group of conservative Presbyterians responded with five convictions that came to be considered the core Fundamentals from which the movement derived its name. Those five convictions flowed from their certainty in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. They were . . .1)  The inerrancy of the original writings.2)  The virgin birth of Jesus.3)  The substitutionary atonement of Jesus on the cross.4)  His literal, bodily resurrection.5)  A belief that Jesus' miracles were to be understood as real events and not merely literary mythology meant to teach some ethical imperative. Jesus really fed thousands with a few fish and loaves, really raised Jairus' daughter from the dead, and really walked on water.These fundamentals were elaborated and released between 1910 and 15 in a set of booklets called The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. The Stewart brothers funded their publication and ensured they were distributed to every Christian leader across the US. Some three million copies were circulated before WWI to combat the threat of Modernism.

Since last week's episode was titled Westward Ho! As we track the expansion of the Faith into the New World with Spain and Portugal's immersion, this week as we turn to the other Europeans we'll title this week's episode, Westward Ho-Ho, because I'm tired of saying Part 2. I know it's lame, but hey, it's my podcast so I'll call it what I want.Before we dive into this week's content, I wanted to say a huge thanks to all those who've left comments on iTunes and the CS FB page.Last week we ended the episode on the expansion of the Faith into the New World by speaking of the Spanish missions on the West Coast. The Spanish were urgent to press north from what would later be called Southern CA because the Russians were advancing south from their base in Alaska. And as any history buff knows, they'd already established a base at San Francisco.Russians weren't the only Old World power feared by Spain. The French had New World possessions in Louisiana and French Jesuits were active in the Mississippi Valley. Some dreamed of a link between French Canada and the South down the Mississippi River. The gifted linguist Father Marquette, sailed south along the Mississippi and attempted a mission among the Illinois Indians. While in Quebec, he'd made himself master of 7 Algonquin languages and gained a mighty reputation as an Indian-style orator. He combined preacher, pastor, explorer and geographer in one. His writings contributed to local knowledge of Indian peoples, culture, and agriculture. As any high school student knows, the French were to lose New Orleans and Western Mississippi to Spain, while Eastern Mississippi went to the British. But French Carmelites, a 16th C branch of the Franciscans known as the Recollects, and the Jesuits accomplished much in French possessions before the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1763. They'd attempted a failed mission to the Sioux. Nevertheless, French Roman Catholic influence remained strong in Canada.As I tell these ultra-bare sketches of mission work among New World Indians, it can easily become just a pedantic recounting of generalized info. A sort of, “Europeans came, Indians were preached to. Churches were planted. Movements happened, some guys died - blah, blah, blah.”Our goal here is to give the history of the Church in short doses. That means, if we're to make any headway against the flow of it all, we have to summarize a LOT. But that works against real interest in the history and what makes the story exciting.It's the individual stories of specific people that make the tale come alive. à Jesuit, Franciscan, and Protestant missionaries; and just ordinary colonists who weren't set on a specific mission but were real-deal born again followers of Jesus who came to the New World to make a new life for themselves and their descendants, and just happened to share their faith with the Native Americans and they got saved and started a whole new chapter in the Jesus story. è THAT'S where the good stuff is.So, let me mention one of these Jesuit missionaries we've been talking about who brought the Gospel to Canadian Indians.Jean de Brébeuf was born to a family of the French nobility and entered the Jesuit order in 1617. He reached Canada 8 yrs later. He learned Algonquin and lived among the Huron for 3 yrs. After being captured by the British, he returned to France but renewed his mission in 1633. He founded an outpost called St Marie Among the Hurons in 1639. The Mission was destroyed by the Iroquois a decade later.Because De Brébeuf was tall and strongly built, he became known as the Gentle Giant. Like the Jesuits in Paraguay we looked at in the last episode, he could see ahead into how European colonists would bring an unstoppable challenge to the Indian way of life and advocated the Hurons withdraw into a secluded missionary settlement in order to preserve their culture. He's an example of the heroic pioneer Jesuit, of which there were many, whose missionary life ended in martyrdom in the field.De Brébeuf stands as a little known, but ought to be lauded, example of the fact that not all Europeans who came to the New World, especially not all missionaries, conflated following Christ with European culture and lifestyle. That's an assumption many moderns have; that it wasn't until the modern era that missionaries figured out people could remain IN their culture and follow Jesus, that they didn't have to become converts to Western Civilization BEFORE they could become Christians. While it has certainly been true that some missions and eras equated the Faith with a particular cultural milieu, throughout history, MOST believers have understood that the True Gospel is trans-cultural, even super-cultural.Many Jesuit missionaries in the New World like De Brébeuf tried to preserve the native American cultures – while filling them with the Gospel. They saw the emerging European colonies as a THREAT to the Indians and wanted to protect them.With the end of the 7 Years War, or as it's known in the US, the French and Indian War, French Canada became a British possession. The Jesuits, on the verge of their being banned from the New World, expanded their work among the Indians to include the Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Senecas, as well as those Algonquins yet unreached in Quebec. While converts were made among the Iroquois tribes, the majority remained hostile. Among the converts, there was a huge problem with disease introduced by the missionaries themselves, and the influence of alcohol brought by Europeans. Indian physiological tolerance to hard alcohol was low and addiction quick. Jesuit missionaries reached the Hudson Bay area and baptized thousands. Even after the British won Canada and the Jesuit order was suppressed, some remained in Canada as late as 1789.In the far NW, Russians entered Alaska in 1741. Russian Orthodox Christianity had begun on Kodiak Island, just off Alaska, in 1794. By ‘96 thousands of Kodiaks and the population of the Aleutian Islands had been baptized. They met hostility from the Russian American Company but the mission received fresh invigoration by the arrival an Orthodox priest from Siberia named Innocent Veniaminoff.  He reached the Aleutians in the 1820s and mastered the local dialect well enough to translate the Gospel of Matthew and write a devotional tract that became a classic, titled = An Indication of the Pathway into the Kingdom of Heaven. After working among the Aleutians for some years, Veniaminoff served among the Tlingit people. After his wife died, he was appointed bishop of a vast region stretching from Alaska to CA. Between 1840 and 68 he carried out a massive work. Although 40 yrs of missionary service, often in conditions of tremendous physical hardship, left him exhausted and longing to retire, he was appointed Metropolitan of Moscow, a position he used to found the Russian Missionary Society as a means of support for Orthodox missions. His outstanding service was recognized in 1977 by the Orthodox Church of America conferring on him the title of ‘Evangelizer of the Aleuts and Apostle to America.'Alaska was sold to the United States in the 1870s but the Orthodox Synod created an independent bishopric to include Alaska in 1872. By 1900 there were some 10,000 Orthodox Christians in the diocese. Of the 65,000 Alaskan and Aleutian people today, some 70% claim to be Christian and many of these belong to the Orthodox community.The Roman Catholic orders had a great advantage in missions due to their central organizing body called The Sacred Propaganda for the Faith. Today this structure is called the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Nations.In contrast to Roman monastic orders and their missionary zeal, Protestant churches had little missionary vision in the 16th C. When they engaged in missions in the 17th they had no organizing center.French Protestants, led by the Huguenot Admiral Coligny, attempted a short-lived experiment off Rio de Janeiro when Admiral Villegagnon established a Calvinist settlement in 1555. It folded when the French were expelled by the Portuguese. A more permanent Calvinist settlement was made by the Dutch when they captured Pernambuco, a region at the eastern tip of Brazil. This settlement remained a Calvinist enclave for 40 years.North America presented a very different scene for missions than Central and South America. The voyage of the Mayflower with its ‘Pilgrims' in 1620 was a historical pointer to the strong influence of Calvinism in what would become New England. The states of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire were strongly Congregationalist or Presbyterian in church life and heavily influenced by English Puritanism. At least some of these pioneers felt a responsibility for spreading the Christian faith to the native Americans.John Eliot is regarded as the driving force behind the early evangelization of the Indians. He was the Presbyterian pastor at Roxby, a village near Boston in 1632. He learned the Iroquois language, and like the Jesuits in Paraguay, though surely with no knowledge of their methodology, founded ‘praying towns' for the Indians. These were communities that, over a period of 40 yrs, came to include some 3,000 Christian Indians in Natick and other settlements. Eliot translated the entire Bible into Iroquois by 1663 and trained 24 native American pastors by the time of his death.A remarkable family called The Mayhews were pioneers in missionary work in Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands off Cape Cod. Thomas Mayhew bought the islands in 1641 with an Indian population of around 5,000. His son, Thomas Jr., began a mission and by 1651 200 Indians had come to faith. After the death of Thomas Sr. and Jr., John, youngest son of  Thomas Jr., along with his son Experience Mayhew continued the mission.  Experience had the advantage of fluency in the Indian language with the ability to write it. Zechariah, his son, carried on a tradition that lasted all the way to 1806 and produced many Indian clergy and a Harvard graduate. The ministry of the Mayhews spanned almost 2 centuries.Another New England figure who became a missionary icon to such great spreaders of the faith as William Carey and David Livingstone, was David Brainerd. Brainerd was born in the farming country of Haddam, Connecticut, and studied for the ministry at Yale College, from which he was wrongly expelled in 1741. He impressed the local leadership of the Scottish Society for the Propagation of the Gospel enough for them to employ him for missionary service in 1742. He worked among the Indians of Stockbridge and then, after ordination as a Presbyterian, he worked in western Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. There he experienced genuine religious revival among the Delaware Indians, which he recounted in detail in his journals.Brainerd died young but his diary and the account of his life by the great preacher, theologian, and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, became immensely influential in the Protestant world. Edwards, also a student at Yale, was himself a missionary at Stockbridge among the Indians from 1750–58.While it's risky to do a diagnosis on someone 270 years later, we glean from David Brainerd's logs that he suffered from at least a mild case of a depression-disorder, and maybe not so mild. It's his honesty in sharing with his journals his emotions that proved to be a tonic to mission-luminaries like Carey and Livingstone.New England Presbyterians and Congregationalists were matched by other Protestants in their efforts among Indians. Episcopalians and the missionary society of the Church of England achieved some success in evangelizing them.Work among the Iroquois of New York was initiated by Governor Lord Bellomont, and a converted Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, who helped establish a Mohawk church. Queen Anne of England even presented silver communion implements to 4 Mohawk Christians in London in 1704 for use in one of their chapels.In Virginia, the royal charter declared one of the aims of the colony was the conversion of Indians. The first minister of the village of Henrico, Alexander Whitaker, did significant missionary work and introduced the Indian princess, Pocahontas, to the faith.BTW: Pocahontas was her nickname – which translates roughly to “Little Hellion.” Her real name was Matoaka, but she was so precocious as a child her nickname became her favored label.Whitaker established a college at Henrico for the education of Indians and there were appeals for funding for Indian missions back in England by King James I and his archbishops so that 1 of 6 professorships at the College of William and Mary was set apart for teaching Indians.Methodists had the example of John and Charles Wesley when they were Anglican priests and missionaries for the Society of the Proclamation of the Gospel in Georgia from 1735. Though John's primary assignment was a chaplain for the English settlers, he tried to reach out to the Choctaw and Chickasaw. He had little response from the Native Americans. No wonder, since he'd later say he was most likely unconverted at that point.After his break with the Church of England, Wesley's chief lieutenant in the New World was Thomas Coke who became a driving force for Methodist missionary work, attempting a mission in Nova Scotia in 1786 before being re-directed to the West Indies by a storm. Methodist missions came into their own in the 19th C after Coke's death and took the form of frontier preachers and ‘circuit riders' under the direction of Francis Asbury, who traveled some 300,000 miles on horseback in the cause of the Gospel and whose vision included both Indians and black slaves for Methodist outreach. By the time of Asbury's death in 1816 Methodist membership had risen from just 13 to 200,000 over a 30-yr period.The 19th C in North America saw the far north reached by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists.The 19th C was a time of extraordinary development in North America, despite the ravages of the Civil War in the 1860's. Great numbers of immigrants flooded into the country from Europe, estimated at 33 million between 1820 and 1950. Of British emigrants between 1815 and 1900, 65% found their way to the US. Of African-Americans, whereas only some 12% belonged to a church in 1860, by 1910 that number was 44%. Many joined the Baptist and Methodist congregations of the southern states after the abolition of slavery. In the Nation at large, the extraordinary achievement to any non-American was the blending into one nation of so many different peoples, so that their American citizenship was more prominent than their roots as Italian, Irish, Jewish, German, Scandinavian or English. This influx posed great challenges to the churches but Americans largely became a church-going people. And while differences over Religion had become the cause of so much misery and bloodshed in Post-Reformation Europe, Americans learned to live in civil harmony with people of other denominations.