This Day in Baptist History

March 21, 1820 – Adiel Sherwood was ordained to the gospel ministry, by the Bethesda Baptist Church, in Greene County, Georgia, Jesse Mercer, pastor. Adiel was born in Ft. Edward, N.Y., on Oct. 3, 1791, to Col. and Mrs. Adiel Sherwood. His father served under Gen. Geo. Washington in the Rev. War and had amassed much wealth, but his fortune was lost, and young Adiel had to work to earn his way through school, which included Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He spent a year at Andover Theological Seminary where he met Luther Rice, the returned missionary partner of the Judson’s. Under his influence he became a part-time city missionary and field rep. for the Mass. Baptist Missions Society. In 1818, at age 27, suffering with TB, he traveled to Georgia. He became effective as an educator, itinerant preacher, revivalist/evangelist, church planter and pastor of Baptist churches. He had great ability in organization. He served as professor of Columbian College in Wash. D.C., helped found Mercer Institute, and was President of Shurtleff College in Alton, IL. But he was most outstanding in the pulpit. In 1827 in Eatonton, Georgia, revival fell and continued in the Ocmulgee Assoc. in the fall of that year, under his powerful preaching, 4,000 responded to prayer. In a year there were not less than 15,000 additions to the churches by baptism. He traveled through forty counties in GA, preaching 333 sermons while maintaining his pastoral duties. In 1865 Dr. Sherwood moved to Missouri to live out the rest of his days. He died on Aug. 19, 1879, in his eighty-eighth year. He had been preaching for almost three score and ten years. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 156-57. [C.F: Julia L. Sherwood, Memoir of Adiel Sherwood, D.D. (Philadelphia: Grand and Faires, 1884), p. 170.]

This Day in Baptist History

March 20, 1824 – Was the date on the letter from James Thomson stating that he expected that the entire New Testament would be translated into the Peruvian language within the course of a week. On March 1, he had written to the British and Foreign Bible Society that had sent him to Latin America, and told them that he thought it should be finished in three months. By 1826, after visiting and ministering in Ecuador and Colombia, Thomson returned to Britain to make a report of the accomplishment of those eight years. Sadly, he was never able to return to the field. Following his departure from Latin America, the Roman Catholic priesthood and the apathy of the people brought almost to naught the good work that the man of God had accomplished. Little information is known of the early years of Thomson. It is known that he was the first evangelical missionary to introduce the Bible in Latin America. He was sent by the Society that had been formed in England, by Joseph Lancaster, to establish popular schools that would use the Bible as the main textbook. Using the Bible as his basic unit of instruction, Thomson established a hundred Lancastrian schools in Buenos Aires with five thousand students before moving to Chile in 1821. Having seen this success, Argentina honored Thomson by granting him honorary citizenship, and Chile followed suit. As great as Thomson was, there was little lasting fruit of his labors because he did not leave local churches behind, in the N.T. pattern, given in the Great Commission at Mt. 28: 18-20. We must remember that the church “is the pillar and ground of the truth.”

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 154-56. [C.F: William Mitchell, “James Thompson and Bible Translation in the Andean Languages,” Bible Translator, July 1990, p. 341.]

Baptist Principles Promote Liberty

This Day in Baptist History

March 19, 1809 – The Buck Mountain Church; sent this greeting to Thomas Jefferson when his presidency was over. “Dear Sir, We congratulate you in your return home from your labours and painful service of eight years, now to take some hours of retirement and rest, enjoying at pleasure the company of your loving friends and neighbors…May your days be many and comfortable. In a word (may we say) we wish you health, wealth and prosperity through life, and in the world to come life everlasting.” Jefferson was the statesman of the Revolution, George Washington was the general, and Benjamin Franklin was the sage. But there is much evidence that Jefferson was greatly influenced in his ideas of a democratic form of government, by a little Baptist church, near his home in Virginia. Several sources claim that Jefferson often attended the services and saw them conduct their business in the presence of the entire congregation. Jefferson was heard to remark that in his opinion it was the only form of true democracy any place in the world. To what degree this influenced Jefferson we cannot say but undoubtedly it was not inconsiderable. In fact Dolly Madison attested later that Mr. Jefferson remarked to her that a Baptist church influenced his views on this subject. The church was the Albemarle Baptist Church, which became known as the Lewis Meeting House which was located about 11/2 miles west of the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. It was later called Buck Mountain, and finally took the name of Chestnut Grove Baptist and is the oldest church in the Albermarle Baptist Association. Republicanism is a Baptist principal.

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 152-54. [C.F: Edgar Woods, History of Albermarle County (Charlottesville, Va.: Michie Printing Co., 1901), p. 132.

"Saint" Patrick Was a Baptist!

Read the famous sermon "delivered to a thronged congregation at the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City by the pastor, Dr. John Summerfield Wimbish, on March 12, 1952, just a few days before the phenomenal St. Patrick's Day parade."

Listen to the not so famous sermon "The Kidnapping of Saint Patrick" delivered to a handful of people at Peaceful Valley Baptist Church on March 2nd, 2009.

Slimed in the Check-out Line!

Ok, allow me a little bit of a rant here! This is a constant sore spot with me, but today I was in the local "Stuff"-Mart, and it really got under my skin! You can't even walk through the check-out line without getting slimed by all the filth!

As a rule, I don't go down the magazine aisle (Proverbs 4:14-15). I know what is there. Believers are commanded to be circumspect (Ephesians 5:15), so it's best that I just don't go down that aisle. But everybody has to go through the check-out aisle!

There, on every shelf are strange women (Proverbs 23:26-28), leering from the covers of the magazines (Proverbs 6:25) in various stages of undress (Proverbs 7:10), and the headlines scream with more impudence than Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39:7) with the titillating titles of the pornographic articles contained inside!

What can we do? Well, we can complain to the manager, but don't hold your breath for a whole lot of action. I'm not real fond of trying to bend pagans into outward conformity to our principles anyway. I don't remember the apostles calling for boycotts. What I try to do is to turn as many of the offending magazines backwards in the rack as I can while I am standing there. I try not to take the kids through the check-out line as much as possible. One thing that might be a solution is to check out through the alternate cash registers (such as the sporting goods section, lawn and garden section, customer service desk, etc.). As long as you don't have any "weighable produce" or just a huge buggy full of stuff it's usually not a problem, and you usually don't have to "run the gauntlet" of magazine racks to get to them.

Men, let's take the initiative for guarding our own eyes (Proverbs 4:25) and those of our wives and children.

The Church

Libertarianism In A Nutshell

Below are excerpts from Dr. Laurence Vance's latest article over at Campaign for Liberty titled, "Every Crime Needs A Victim."

This article does a really good job of succinctly stating the position of libertarianism. I believe libertarianism, as set forth in this article is very consistent with Bible-believing Christianity. Enjoy!

"Every crime needs a victim. Not wearing a seatbelt, not wearing helmet, texting while driving, doing business on Sunday, usurious lending practices, price gouging, ticket scalping, gambling without the state's permission, using the services of a prostitute, abusing drugs, and a host of other "crimes" that I have not mentioned are not crimes at all. They may be immoral, they may be vices, they may be bad habits, they may be dangerous, they may be foolish, they may be addictive, they may harm those who willingly participant in them, they may have no redeeming value whatsoever, but as long as those who engage in them are not harming or violating the personal or property rights of non-participants, they should not be crimes."

"First, the purpose of government is supposed to be to protect life, liberty, and property from violence or fraud. It is simply not the business of government to prohibit the advertising, sale, and use of what it deems to be harmful substances. Likewise, the government should not be concerned with keeping people from vice or bad habits and regulating or prohibiting activities that take place between consenting adults. A government with the power to outlaw harmful substances and immoral practices is a government with the power to ban any substance and any practice. A nanny state is a perversion of government."

"Religious people in particular make a grave mistake when they look to the state to enforce their morality. The actions of the state are typically the greatest examples of immoral behavior that one could possibly think of. Yet, many religious people not only look to the state to enforce a moral code, they defend, support, and make excuses for the state, its politicians, its legislation, and its wars. Some victimless crimes may indeed be sins, but it is not the purpose of religion to use force or the threat of force to keep people from sinning. Rebuke, persuasion, and instruction are certainly more biblical methods than using the power of the state to change or restrict people's behavior."

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=868