Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard.

• 1 Kings 10:7

“A Hampden-Sydney student named Cary Allen had embraced Christ in September 1787. Another, William Hill, began secretly reading Joseph Alleine’s book Alarm to the Unconverted, which he kept locked in his trunk. One day a third student, James Blythe, found him reading it and broke out in sobs, under deep conviction. These three students met secretly for prayer in a thick forest about a mile from the college and determined to meet the next Saturday on campus. Their secrecy was due to other students’ animosity toward Christians. Fundamentalist secularism harbors a deep intolerance for the Christian faith. That was as true in the early 1800s as it is today. As Hill later recounted:

“Although we sung and prayed with suppressed voices, not wishing it should be known what we were about, we were overheard by some of the students, when it was noised about through every room in College, and a noisy mob was raised, which collected in the passage before our door, and began to thump at the door, and whoop, and swear, and threaten vengeance.  We had to cease, and bear the ridicule and abuse of this noisy riot, which could not be quietened until two of the Professors intervened and ordered them all to their rooms. Information of this riot was given to [President Robert Blair] Smith [who] demanded the cause of the riot, and who were the leaders in it. Some of the most prominent leaders stepped forward and said, there were some of the students, who had shut themselves up in one of the rooms in College, and began singing and praying and carrying on like the Methodists, and they were determined to break it up…
“The President’s eyes filled with tears.  After a short pause he said-And has it come to this! Is it possible! Some of my students are under religious impressions!-and determined to serve their Savior! And is it possible that there are such monsters of iniquity in College, who dare set themselves against such things!”

• 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.

This event took place seven years and one week after the battle of Yorktown essentially ended the American Revolution.

There is a poem in my edition of The Officer’s Guide.  It is attributed to an unknown soldier at Marlborough.  JFK used it in a speech and attributed it to a guard on the frontier at Gibraltar, who wrote the poem and laid it aside, to be found by the next guard at that guardhouse.  I have Rudyard Kipling attributed here.  There have been other attributes.  Let’s say no one knows for sure, but I like the JFK version – not a person, but a mysterious story.

“In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.”

• Rudyard Kipling

In those seven years, church attendance had dropped drastically.  French rationalism, a branch of philosophy, ruled the day.  Chief Justice John Marshall lamented that he felt that the church could not be saved.  They had gone too far in the wrong direction.

As for Hampden-Sydney College, the college still exists.  The address is Hampden Sydney, Virginia, but it is in either Kingsville or Worsham, Virginia.  Farmville, Virginia is to the north northeast and is a slightly larger town and on US highway 460 between Appomattox and Lynchburg, VA (home of Liberty University) to the west and Petersburg, VA to the east, just south of Richmond, the state capitol.

Reading the reaction of the school president, he had probably spent too much time in his ivory tower to realize that the secular “progressives” had taken over the college, right out from underneath his leadership.

But that was not the end of the story, when the president’s father, who became a Christian during the first awakening, heard of the riot and the subsequent spread of the Gospel, he wrote a letter to a friend based on the Queen of Sheba’s reaction to Solomon’s wisdom and majesty (including the verse above from 1 Kings 10:7 – not understanding half of God’s power, no, not even a tenth, nothing like it since the first awakening).  From that moment on, the revival erupted.  It was not one large event.  It grew like a wildfire, from one town to another, spreading throughout the new United States of America.

When I read this, I immediately thought of September 11 and the terrorist attacks.  The churches were standing room only for about six weeks, then attendance started getting smaller.  And I think when our church hit bottom, less were attending than before the terror attacks.

Whoever wrote that poem that I attributed to Kipling, it’s true and it seems to take a shorter and shorter amount of time before we forget God and slight the soldier.

But, there are revivals going on across the nation at various universities.  And I think various organizations are leading these revivals.  Of course, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, but it seems that Gen Z are tired of the emptiness that the secular world is putting forth.  They want answers to questions that only the Bible can offer.

Let us pray that these revivals become the impetus to get our nation, and the world, going in the right direction.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.