George Washington Parke Custis was Martha Washington's grandson. George Custis’ father died the same year he was born. Young George then went to live with Martha, his grandmother, and George Washington, his step-grandfather. He was then on raised on Mount Vernon by President and Mrs. Washington as their own child. George W. P. Custis greatly admired George Washington and Loved him like a Father. He had this to say about our first president:

On Sundays, unless the weather was uncommonly severe, the President and Mrs. Washington attended divine services at Christ Church, and in the evenings , the President read to Mrs. Washington, in her chamber, a sermon, or some portion from the sacred writings. No visitors, with the exception of Mr. Speaker Trumbull, were admitted on Sundays.

I think it is interesting to see how America's first president spent the Lord's Day. His Sunday practice was then followed by a great segment of the population. The Lord’s Day was then seen as a day of worship, rest and family. The Blue laws that were once common in this land, even when I was young, were written so that the law reflected what was then the cultural norm.

Today what used to be the Lord's Day is just another day for most of us. It’s a day to rush home and participate in one of America's favorite religious past times "pro-football" or it is another day to spend at the mall etc... These are but a couple of small examples of how far we have moved away from the Christian culture of our Fathers.

In earlier times, because ours was a Christian culture, it was believed that folks were not to work on Sunday, unless what they were doing was an act of necessity or a work of mercy. Now, I am sad to say, everything and even anything is ok.

George and Martha's simpler Sunday's were what would be expected from people living out their lives in a Christian culture. I hope and pray that our children or grandchildren may live in a land that has, by God's grace, returned to her Christian roots.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith
Ps. George W. P. Custis was also the father-in-law of another devout Christian man; Robert E. Lee.

Ninetenth and Twentieth Centurys

In Europe and America technological advancements during the nineteenth century were truly amazing. They had entered the century with horses as the main means of transportation on land, and wooden sailing ships on the oceans; at century's end they had trains and even automobiles and the oceans could now be crossed on self propelled vessels of steel. Telephones were in use, and electricity was being harnessed. There were many more dramatic advancements during the century.

In the nineteenth century Charles Darwin had published his Origin of Species. He was not the first to propose an evolutionary view of man, such views were thousands of years old, and had existed in various pagan systems, but Darwin was the first to put it into a scientific package. This was important to the nineteenth century, because the scientist was, by then, well on his way to becoming the determiner of truth for much of the European and American elite. Now with Darwin’s work in print, people knew that man would advance, and this, without the help of a god.

New ideas had also entered many of the churches. Creation and Biblical history did not agree with anthropology and other sciences, which were now attempting to explain things from a naturalistic (atheistic) view point. Many churches decided that in order to remain relevant they needed to line up with science, so creation and miracles were explained away, and a social gospel replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As the twentieth century dawned, optimism in man reigned supreme. Men believed the sciences would soon conquer nature, and with the social gospel, replacing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, hunger and poverty would soon be a thing of the past. Progress was inevitable, and old Christian God was no longer needed.

The new optimism, however, soon vanished. During the twentieth century two world wars would kill tens of millions of peoples. Secular (atheistic/humanistic) religions like Communism, Anarchism, Fascism, Nazism, would murder tens of millions more. This most secular century in all of human history is also the bloodiest century in all of human history.

God will not be mocked; the western world entered the twentieth century mocking the God of Scripture. It has paid a very heavy price and, as we can see, it seems to have learned nothing.

We are in need of Christian Reformation. Christians need to apply the scriptures to all areas of life. Man has made great strides technologically, but morally and culturally we need to return to the Word of God for answers. If we do not turn to God and the Scriptures then, in this twenty-first century, our children may well witness a repeat of the horrors of the twentieth century or worse.

Soli Deo Gloria
Kenith

American political institutions had Christian foundations because the men that gave us those institutions read Christian works about a biblical view of civil Government. John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the political theorists that the founders looked to. His 2nd Treatise On Government is credited with being the foundation stone of our Declaration of Independence and it is. With just a cursory reading of Locke it is easy to see his influence on the declaration. In his treatise John Locke goes to the Scriptures in order to defend his views for restraining tyrannical kings. Locke quotes the scriptures at least 1,000 times in this book. He got his ideas from the Puritan ministers he studied under and their books that he read. One of the works Locke read was Lex Rex by Rev. Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661). Rutherford and Lock were both popular with our founding fathers. Another popular book amongst the founders was Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (or in English: A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants) by a Reformed French Christian (a Huguenot) Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623). under the pen name Junius Brutus. John Adams said this book was very influential on the founding fathers. It was written by a Christian looking to God's Word for a better understanding and better foundation for civil government that would allow for Christian liberty.

No one holding to today's popular dispensational theology could have written any of these works. The dispensational understanding of how the Christian life is applicable to the world around us is far too narrow to have written such books. The books mentioned above are very important and played a great part in bestowing upon us our political and religious liberty that we have inherited from our forebears. I have read two of the three books completely and a good bit of Lex Rex. They are difficult to read but I highly recommend them. They are certainly worth the effort.

The Reformed Christian looks to the Great Commission, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Cultural Mandate (i.e. Gen1:27), the fact that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, that Christ is now given all authority in heaven and on earth, the fact that He is at the right hand of the Father and will remain there until his enemies are made His footstool as the foundation for optimism in the continued success of the Gospel in converting the World to Christ over the long haul. We think very long term when we are looking forward into the future, and also when we are looking backwards into history.

The Reformed faith believes in the Church triumphant in space, time and history. Many of us believe all Christ enemies will be conquered by the two edged sword of the Gospel before Christ returns.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus-- is not a name known to most of us today, but it is the name of a famous Roman emperor. We know this emperor by his adopted name which is Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or just plain Nero Caesar.

Nero, an extremely evil and perverse man , initiated the first official Roman persecution of Christians. The Roman historian Suetonius (69-140 A.D.) writes of Nero’s many perversions and cruelties in his famous book The Lives of the Twelve Caesars. (Note: I highly recommend reading Suetonius)

Nero was blamed by the people of Rome for a great fire that raged for six days through the City of Rome, and destroyed most of the city. Nero needed a scapegoat for the disaster and he quickly found one in the Christians. He put out the word that it was they who had started the fire.

Roman vengeance on the Church was swift. Some Christians were sown in to animal skins and thrown to wild dogs which tore them to pieces. Christian Women were tied behind bulls and dragged to their deaths. Nero had other Christians covered with pitch and had them tied to poles in his garden. He then had them set on fire to light up the night. He invited the people of Rome to the garden to witness this event. Nero rode through his garden in a chariot as the Christians were burned at the stake.

As I study church history I am often awed by the courage of so many of those that came before us. I am also amazed at some of the things I here modern American Christians say. I was once told by a fellow Christian (who was from a Charismatic background) that if the Apostles Peter and Paul were executed by Nero (and of course they were) it must mean that they had lost faith, because bad things like that don't happen to Christians. How ridicules of a statement was that! -- This person knew nothing about Church history. As you can tell by her statement above, her understanding of what is taught in the Word of God was no better.

We Americans are blessed with abundance and are far better off materially than almost any other people in all of human history. We, you and me, live far better and more comfortably than have most kings in all of history. We need to be thankful that we have not been called to live in poverty, and suffer persecution and death for the faith, as have so many multitudes of our brothers and sisters in Christ that came before us.

I hope our blessings continue, and we are not called to endure what those Christians endured under Nero. We need to increase in faith, and be prepared anyway. We also need to study these things, so we can be truly thankful for the richness of our blessings.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Kenith

Small Beginnings

On the 17th of December 1859 David Livingstone, a Scotch missionary, came to what is now Lake Malawi in Africa. It was Livinstone who, for the first time, opened up the interior of the Africa continent to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The British, Anglicans from England and Presbyterians from Scotland, soon began to send missionaries to the land that we now know as the small country of Malawi in southern Africa. These missionaries were bold, brave men who were concerned for the lives and souls of the African people. They were so concerned that they were willing to die bringing the Gospel to, what was for them, a far off pagan people with a radically different culture.

Today, at a local museum in Malawi, there is a note on display that speaks volumes on the courage and faith of those early brave missionaries. It was written some years after the missionaries began their work and it says that up until the writing of that note that five missionaries had died on the mission fields of Malawi and there had been only one convert to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

There have been great changes since then. Today fifty percent of the people of Malawi are Christians and there is a great zeal and love for the Lord there.

I was privileged, last year to speak with O. Palmer Robertson. Dr. Robertson has spent the last twelve years teaching at the African Bible College located in Lilongwe the Capitol City of Malawi.

We, in the West, often forget that there is a great world beyond our shores. We see the attacks and retreats of the Christian faith going on here and in Europe, but we seldom look beyond that.

The fact is that the greatest expansion of the Christian faith, since the apostolic era, has taken place in the last 100 year. And that great expansion and engrafting of peoples into the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is continuing at a rapid pace all around the World.

One percent of Korean's were Christian at the time of W.W.I, but today half of South Korea is Christian. God's Word is going forth and the nations are being brought into His Kingdom. Don't let disappointments cloud your eyes or dishearten you. What if those five missionaries, who died bring the Gospel to Malawi, had quit because they did not see much fruit while they lived? Those brave men planted the seeds that have produced the mass conversions to the Gospel that have taken place in the last century.

God calls us to be faithful. He will produce the fruit when He decides. We are to be about the Great Commission (i.e. make disciples) and not worry about the outcome, because that is in the hands of God and not our own. If we are faithful we may know with certainty that God will produce fruit even if we do not live to see it.

Coram Deo,
Kenith