Time for Church

In the latest polls, weekly church attendance is gauged at between 35% - 39% in the United States. Whether you read Gallup, Pew Research, or Barna, all the pollsters agree that church attendance is on the decline. This challenge has arisen during various decades.

One hundred years ago, former President Theodore Roosevelt was encouraged by Edward Bok to impact America again. Bok relates the story in his Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography The Americanization of Edward Bok (1921), of how he approached Teddy Roosevelt to write 12 articles for the newly begun Men's Department of the Ladies Home Journal. The Journal had a circulation of one million readers.

Roosevelt had a free hand to write on themes that he felt needed addressed: Employers, Employees, Father/Child Relationships, the Public School, and others. His eleventh article dealt with church attendance, and was entitled

Shall We Do Away With the Church?

"I know all the Excuses for Not Going"

In the article, Theodore Roosevelt praised the good that the church had done for America. In the second column, Roosevelt made this statement: "Therefore, on Sunday go to church." During the rest of the piece, the President listed several profound phrases on church attendance: "He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon from a good man...", "Besides, even if he doesn't hear a good sermon, the probabilities are that he will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible." "I advocate a man's joining in church work for the sake of showing his faith by his works:" The complete article can be read on Google Books.

We know that church attendance does not mandate heaven, but for the believer, church attendance and giving do outwardly indicate one's faith and practice to this needy generation.

Classes Resume on January 18, 2017

Second semester classes begin on Wednesday, January 18, 2017. There is still time for those interested in taking classes to sign up for the Spring term. A full listing of both day and evening classes, along with a special student registration form is available on our website, or by contacting the office.

We look forward to a fine schedule of chapel preachers and other special events planned for this year. You are always invited to attend.

A Complete Change

William Mitchell Ramsay was afforded the benefit of an expensive education in England. His enrollment came during the time of the attacks on the Bible that began in Germany, forming much of the higher criticism found at Oxford and other colleges. As Ramsay finished his formal education, he chose to travel to Asia Minor (Turkey). There, serving as an archeologist, he hoped to disprove the New Testament, especially the work and the letters of Paul.

But as Ramsay traveled and studied in the Middle East, he became convinced of the accuracy of the Bible. Cities, only known through the pages of the Bible were unearthed, and the doubts that he had been taught, evaporated into answers.

By the close of his life in 1939, he had become the foremost authority in his day on the history of Asia Minor, and a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament. He painstakingly answered the questions of the learned infidels through lectures and writing. From a critic of the Bible to a believer in God's Word, Ramsay's work encompassed ten complete volumes. During Ramsay's lifetime, many of the former attacks on the Bible were silenced.

But our adversary never gives up. Today, we hear renewed attacks on the credibility of the Bible, some of these are only old attacks relabeled. Ramsay had an answer for these attacks, one hundred years ago: "The evidence to test all important history, and especially the Old and the New Testaments, exists and can be discovered with patience, knowledge, ingenuity and money." (Ramsay, William. The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament. Grand Rapid, MI: Baker Book House. Reprinted 1979 from 1915 edition. p. 69)