The Crisis in Evangelism (1970)

Recently I posted to the PCA Historical Center’s web site the content of THE EVANGELICAL STUDENT, a small magazine published by the League of Evangelical Students from 1926 until dissolution in 1939.  More about the League next week.  But this effort of scanning and posting that magazine has prompted some looking around other viable candidates for posting.

So this past week I’ve busied myself putting up the content of newsletters published by two organizations that were formative for the organization of the Presbyterian Church in America. The first of these organizations, Concerned Presbyterians Inc., published its newsletter, THE CONCERNED PRESBYTERIAN, beginning in March of 1965 and ending sometime in 1976. (For some reason the last several issues were undated and so it is difficult to date them precisely.)

The second organization, Presbyterian Churchmen United, formed a few years later and its newsletter, CONTACT, ran from May 1970 until September 1973. Once plans for the organization of the “Continuing Presbyterian Church” were well underway, the PCU organization was quick to disband.

Of this last newsletter, CONTACT, there were four short messages that caught my eye. Reproduced here, to familiarize you with some of the content of this newsletter, is the first of these four messages. Here the Rev. Ben Wilkinson brings an address on “The Crisis in Evangelism”. He is speaking to the situation in the Presbyterian Church in the United States at that time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, just prior to the formation of the PCA.

Machen on Fellowship and Conflict

Though this article is undoubtedly included in Machen’s bibliography (I didn’t check), no copy of it could be located on the Internet at this time. So it seemed good to post it. This is yet another item from THE PRESBYTERIAN.

Christian Fellowship and the World-Wide Conflict*
By Professor J. Gresham Machen, D.D. 

*Le Christianisme est-il crétien? Quartre conférences avec Notes documentaires et critiques. Par E. Doumergue, Doyen hononaire de la Faculté de Théologie pretestante de Montauban. Editions de l’union des chrétiens evangeliques, 32, boulevard de Vincennes, Fontenay-sous-Bois (Seine), [final three words of this text obscured]

Gradually the conviction is gaining ground among Christians throughout the world that Modernism and Christianity are two separate and distinct religions between which there can be no common ground.  In America the issue has been raised in the clearest possible way in what the Modernist opponents of Christianity call the “Fundamentalist controversy.”  In England and on the continent of Europe the controversy has sometimes been belittled as a curious American phenomenon like Prohibition or the Ku Klux Klan ; but the very attention which has been given to it — for example, in the recent elaborate series of articles in The British Weekly — shows that it is not so despicable as the advocates of theological peace-at-any-price profess to believe. The truth is that there is a larger number of evangelical Christians in the world than might be supposed by readers of The British Weekly or the Christliche Welt, and that what was done by Dr. Clarence E. Macartney, for example, the moderator of the last General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, at the beginning of the “Fosdick case,” was simply the raising of a standard of revolt which Christian men throughout the world, suffering under Modernist tyranny, had been inchoately longing to see.

Machen Trivia, & An Announcement

Now available online:
THE EVANGELICAL STUDENT
[1926-1939]

The other day I posted this question on some of the Presbyterian discussion Lists:

Machen Trivia:  Name at least five organizations that Machen helped to found, four of which continue to this day.

Not to leave you in suspense, here are the answers, in reverse order:

The Church’s Call

Yet another article from THE EVANGELICAL STUDENT. Watch for more news about recent work with this publication.

THE SPIRIT OF ERROR
by J.G. Vos
[The Evangelical Student 1.2 (October 1926): 6-7.]

ERROR is always with us. It assumes many forms and makes various appeals. The systems of falsehood are almost without number. There are errors as old as the ages, and there are errors of recent origin. Errors appear, disappear, and reappear, while the truth of God abides continually. So sporadic, indeed, have been the errors, and so constant is the truth, that some have concluded that all error, because it is error, is about to die; and that all truth, because it is truth, is sure to survive.

This conclusion is certainly fallacious. It is true that error often dies, and that the truth usually survives; but the error does not die because it is error, nor the truth survive because it is truth. If error dies, it is because the Holy Spirit has used means to cut it off. If the truth survives, it is because the Holy Spirit has used means to ensure its survival.

Certain Things Essential

THE SCRIPTURAL METHOD OF BIBLE STUDY
by Professor O. T. Allis, Ph.D.

[The Evangelical Student 1.2 (October 1926): 3-6]

THERE are certain things essential to the truly scriptural study of the Bible which need to be emphasized today in view of the insistent claims which are so often made by the advocates of the so-called “modern” or “critical” method of Bible study.

The first of these is the unity and harmony of the Bible. This characteristic has impressed believing scholars in all ages as a signal proof of its divine origin. The fact that so many different writers, so widely separated in time, wrote a collection of many books which are in the truest sense one book, the Bible, is a strong evidence of its unique inspiration.

The King Does Not Retreat

Recently I’ve been working with our collection of an old periodical titled  THE EVANGELICAL STUDENT.  More about that periodical next week. But for now, here is a sample article from that little journal.

THE WAR PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS
by John B. Champion
[The Evangelical Student 5.2 (January 1931): 21-23.] 

To his professor a student once said: “I am troub1ed about the perseverance of the saints.” The teacher replied: “It is the perseverance of sinners that bothers me.” I do not purpose to discuss now whether the saints can be lost after being saved. This article will deal with Christian perseverance in “fighting the good fight of faith”. The faithful warrior sees the battle all the way through, endures unto the end, is saved, and saves the day.

About thirty years ago I found myself facing in a new way the struggle with modern unbelief. To calmer skies and more peaceful fields I resolved to remove. An old soldier, now in glory, said to me, “Don’t run away from this fight; victory is on the other side of the battlefield.” His words changed the whole course of my life. For them I shall ever be grateful to God and to him. They are here passed on as “the word in season to him that is weary”.