Why Bible Presbyterian?

Continued...

I wish all could have been in Collingswood during the early 60s. The church was full, and the pulpit thundered the timeless truths of God. Many souls were won to Christ in that pinnacle-time. Timid souls were sent soaring into brave service to their Lord. Later troubles cannot dim, in my mind, those memories.

Not too far from here, we heard news of some stubborn Dutchman who in the 50s came out of the Dutch Reformed Church to ally himself to our rag-tag band. His strength, that which brought Instant love of him, was his straight-forward speech and life. Here truly is an "Israelite in whom is no guile" His was a painful and costly struggle. His name was Vandermay. How impoverished we, and we trust he, should have been had he not led his family in this holy act.

One of the greatest crimes we have committed upon our children is the failure to print the lives our unmatched missionaries! No denomination can claim better servants. Sara Hosmon, Louisa Lee, Albert Dodd, J. Gordon Holdcroft, Thomas Lambie, Dwight Malsbury and Malcomb St. Clair Frehn are just a sampling of those from our number "of whom the world was not worthy."

Consider Dr. Frehn who this past year was caught up to Glory. He taught me at Highland College while he was on furlough from Japan. He had been one of McArthur's translators in the war trials of 1945 after years of service in Hokaido. I remember his saying one day in Greek, "Our text (Huddleson Greek Grammar) is a little book, but we are going to learn it all." And we did. I still remember those paradigms of the irregular verb! He used Shedd's Dogmatic Theology text in class. What enlightenment. He was without a doubt the best teacher I ever had. Have our children even heard of him?

Think of Albert Baldwin Dodd. in 1902 he had earned three degrees from Princeton, and presented himself to the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board as a candidate to China. The Board refused him because of a heart murmur, and also because he was partially paralyzed from polio. They told him that he would die from the six-month trip to China. He was convinced God had called Him. He struck a deal with the Board, that if he paid his own way to China and was still alive six months after arrival, they would accept him as their missionary. He remained a missionary to the Chinese people for seventy years. Here was a man who, when he got on an airplane passed out tracts to every single person on the plane. On the train, or the bus he was always evangelizing. Though he was really a scholar and Old Testament teacher in several Chinese theological seminaries, few mission Boards have seen as faithful an evangelist. He was one of those to point out the unbelief of his Board's missionaries. His revelations were instrumental In the founding of the Bible Presbyterian Church.

Sara Hosmon was quite a person. As a girl she lost a leg near the hip in an accident. That didn't seem to slow her. In a day when girls didn't become doctors, she did. God called her to Saudi Arabia and she obeyed. Edna Barter told me of their return to the field In 1952. The ocean liner took them as close to Sharjah's shore a. possible. There was no dock. She and Dr. Hosmon had to get down into a rowboat to go in closer to shore. Soon the shallow waters prevented even their small boat from going farther. Then, Edna said, this elderly one-legged woman (Sara Hosmon) climbed out of the boat and the two of them waded ½ mile to shore carrying their few things. There was nothing awaiting them but sand and a small dirty village. Hosmon saw souls without Christ. This giant of the faith who worked 40 years in Arabia has been forgotten on earth even by her own church.

I remember once being captured by Palestinian comandos. Forty-five Russian rifles were aimed at my head. "What are you doing here? Who are you?" They really threatened! I told them that I worked at the Baraka Hospital in El Arroub near Bethlehem. Their leader smiled and asked, "How is Mrs. Lambie?" The Lambies were a legend in their day. Today you could go to almost any Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East and find some who heard the gospel from the Lambies. Here was a man who not only had his M.D. degree but also had a doctorate in Science. More, he was a great evangelist. God had used him to start and build seven hospitals In his lifetime. He was court physician of Ethiopia for years. The common people loved him because of his great compassion and simple preaching. His tract on separation from apostasy Is still used in our churches. We don't have time to speak of J. Gordon Holdcroft or the Malsburys and how God used them.

Those were great days of excitement and growth in the Bible Presbyterian Church. We were small but unparalleled in our power. Oh If you could all have been there! Oh that we could go back to those early days. That sounds like the words of a sentimental fool. I consider myself neither. I know we cannot go back. The twisted remains of sin obscure even our backward glance. The world has moved forward. God's clock has changed. A new generation and new challenges beckon us. And we delight in this new day. I rejoice in the young men God has given for the new day. As we look at Reformation history what a sad day for us if the Reformation had stopped with Zwingli. As great as he was, his church would have been merely a humanist renaissance movement. His teaching and life were dominated to some extent by the Romanist-humanist Erasmus. Bullinger, his successor maintained the status quo. But Farel -- here was one who D'Aubigne says "despised the men who are never more than half-way on the side of truth, and who, while aware of the dangers of error, are full of deference for those who propagate it." As D'Aubigne goes on to say, "thus in Farel was seen that decision which became one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Reformation in France and French Switzerland (and I add the Bible Presbyterian Church) which has sometimes been stigmatized as rudeness, exclusiveness or intolerance." Erasmus, the leading scholar of the day and editor of the "Textus Receptus", was highly irritated at this new development among the Protestants. He wrote, in a letter to the pope and still on file there, of Farel, "They have always in their mouths these five words -- Gospel, Word of God, Faith, Christ, Holy Spirit; and yet I doubt not that it is the spirit of Satan that impels them." One reformer says of Farel In a letter to Luther, "Some could wish that this zeal against the enemies of the truth were more moderate; but I cannot help seeing in this very zeal an admirable virtue, which, if seasonably displayed is no less necessary than gentleness." D'Aubigne adds, "posterity has confirmed that judgment." Finally Calvin appeared to systematize the results of the Reformation. Without the latter the first were incomplete. Younger men, unto you may fall such responsibility in our own church. We pray God, for the sake of our children, that you have in your midst a Farel and a Calvin.

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