Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

• Galatians 5:1

“Afterward, Parsons accompanied Whitefield to Newburyport and welcomed him into his home for the night. The exhausted evangelist wanted to go upstairs to bed, but a crowd had.gathered in the street. Whitefield agreed to speak to them, and the doors were opened, filling the room with people. Standing on the landing of the staircase, a candle in his hand, Whitefield preached Christ. When the candle burned down and flickered out, Whitefield continued up the stairs, got into bed with his Bible and a copy oflsaac Watts’s hymnbook nearby, and died. He was buried in the vault beneath the floor of Parson’s church, where he remains to this day.
“Jonathan Parsons became known as Whitefield’s deathbed friend, further spurring on his ministry through sermons, spoken and printed. Meanwhile, the forces of Revolution were igniting, and Parsons used his powerful preaching to proclaim liberty throughout the land. On March 5, 1774, he preached a rousing sermon from Galatians 5:1, which became a motto of Revolutionary sentiment: ‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free.’

“And will any tamely submit to be entangled with the yoke of bondage, now that Christ has made us free! We desire liberty with peace, and would gladly live as friends, but if the blessing of liberty cannot be had with peace, it is lawful and right to enter into a contrary state. If former friends now resolved to entangle us with a yoke of bondage, God forbid that we should suffer them to cut off our limbs and mangle our whole body to gratify their injurious demands   If it should be so that our natural and constitutional liberties cannot be recovered and maintained without repelling force by force, who could hesitate for a moment about the propriety of taking up arms?

“Later, when news came of the Battles of Lexington and Concord,

“Jonathan Parsons stood up in his pulpit to preach to the people of liberty and their rights. He was an old man then, just closing his three-score and ten years, but his eyes were not dimmed nor his form bent with age. As he closed his final appeal, his people hung breathless upon his words, and each seemed more anxious than the other to catch his every utterance. ‘Men of America, citizens of this great country hanging upon the precipice of war, loyalty to England lies behind you … duty to freedom, duty to your country, duty to God, is before you.’ ”

• Robert J. Morgan, 100 Bible Verses That Made America

In my recent trip to visit the grandchildren, the oldest of them went with me to Nashville, to sell used books and games.  One of the books that I purchased in return was 100 Bible Verses That Made America by Robert J. Morgan.  As we approach the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the USA, I thought I would do a condensed mini-series on some of these verses, four posts per week for a few weeks – maybe not all 100 verses.

I was tempted to copy the entire chapter.  Who was Jonathan Parsons?  He got his degree at Yale and was a pastor of a church at the time of the Great Awakening.  He gave his life to Christ during the Great Awakening, admitting he was doing it on his own power before that point.  He became a close friend of George Whitefield.

I mentioned in an earlier post in this series that George Whitefield travelled to the colonies throughout this period.  The crossing of the Atlantic had taken a lot out of the aging evangelist, but he kept preaching until that night in the Parsons’ spare room.

And after the Lexington and Concord sermon, Jonathan Parsons passed away on 19 July 1776.  He got to see the Declaration of Independence signed, George Washington leading the army against the British, and his son becoming a colonel in the Connecticut regiment.

His argument for the revolution was that the Church in England dictated the order of worship through the book of prayer.  I have studied the birth of Presbyterianism in Scotland, and it was due to the same thing.  You could not worship as you saw fit.  You must worship in the way the British government dictated that you worship.

This is what is meant by separation of church and state in the Amendments to the Constitution.  The Supreme Court overstepped by removing prayer in school and public venues.  In a way, our government is guilty of the reason Christians backed the revolution.  But some of that corrupted worship is within the denominations themselves, as they accept a more worldly view.

Let us do as the verse states.  Let’s stand firm.  Stand firm in the Bible being the only source, salvation in Jesus alone, in faith alone, and in grace alone.

And as always…

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.