Christian Heroes # 3

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John the Baptizer announced Jesus as the man from Heaven, Son of God, and Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I find it far more reasonable to believe someone who knew Jesus personally, even gave his life for his faith, than to believe twenty-first century critics whose naturalistic assumptions won’t allow them to admit the supernatural. Once again, I thank NavPress and theologian Dr. Rick Cornish for his 5 Minute Church Historian. John said, “Jesus must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30). “ That’s certainly true if we’re to be God honoring faithful useful servants. It’s his loving Holy Spirit working in and through us. Let’s be encouraged by more of God’s great heroes.

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Blaise Pascal (1624-1662). Pascal was an Enlightenment genius. He earned the reputation of a mathematician, scientist, inventor, philosopher, mystic, and Christian apologist. At age fifteen, he worked out thirty-two of Euclid’s propositions that he didn’t know. He invented the first calculator, the vacuum cleaner, the wristwatch, and figured out the principles of atmospheric pressure. In Augustine’s writings, he learned that life’s mystery and suffering met its match in God’s wondrous grace. He sought answers to life’s most vexing questions in the Bible and found peace in Christ. Dying early at just thirty-nine, he left notes. His friends collected and published his notes in a book called Pensees or thoughts. Many regard it as one of the greatest books of all time. It presents persons as wretched creatures transformed by faith in Christ.

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Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Many in science were in Christ who actually motivated their science being the proof that a rational God made a rational and good world. Consider Galileo (astronomy), William Harvey (medicine), Robert Boyle (chemistry), Charles Babbage (computer science), Louis Pasteur (bacteriology) and numerous others. But you won’t find their faith mentioned in science textbooks and will likely find it suppressed in secular colleges. Textbooks writers never mention that Newton ranked Scripture above his scientific discoveries hoping his theories would bring men to God. He wrote more about the Bible and theology than about science. Born on Christmas day, he grew up on a farm, loved books and enrolled at Cambridge. Like many of us at some time, he had doubts about the Trinity and about Christ. His Mathematical Principles blended the physics of motion into a single law of gravity. He and Rene Descartes shaped modern science until the twentieth century. While science and Scripture aren’t at war, the fallible interpretations of men often seem to be.

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John Wesley (1703-1791). Two of the greatest John’s are Jonathan Edwards a Puritan scholar and pastor used of God to bring revival to New England and America, and John Wesley an ocean apart used to bring it to England. Born into a family of nineteen children, Susanna, Wesley’s mother established a pattern in her children’s lives of teaching them the Bible one-on-one once a week. John attended Oxford where he read devotional classics of the early church Fathers. With others, he formed a Holy Club other students taunted calling them “Methodists” for seeking a method to attain spirituality. It consisted of Bible study, prayer, fasting, and service to the downtrodden. Wesley’s discipline enabled him to preach several times a day to common people. He traveled on horseback sixty miles a day preaching throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. Wesley stressed God’s love and holiness of life. Researchers estimate he traveled 250,000 miles and preached 40,000 sermons.

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William Carey (1761-1834). Christians regard William as the Father of Protestant modern missions. Born to a poor English family, at twelve he taught himself Latin. When working as an apprentice shoemaker, he studied the Bible and often fasted to save money for books. He understood the church should take the gospel to everybody. If meant only for the apostles, it would have died with them and people since then would go to Hell. He preached: “Expect Great things {from God}; Attempt Great Things {for God}.” He and a teacher and printer friend planted churches, learned languages, translated and printed Bibles, published grammars and lexicons, founded colleges, and reformed Indian culture. At Fort William College in Calcutta, he became professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi. He tried to end the practices of killing babies and burning widows. The keys to this hero’s success were faith, determination, and persistence. Imagine what we might do to apply his preaching to our lives.

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John Paton (1824-1907). Paton, a tough compassionate missionary, survived cannibals, diseases, threats and attacks on his life, and death of his loved ones to tell savages of love and salvation in Christ. Born to a poor Presbyterian family John quit school to help his family knit stockings to feed the family of eleven children. His father led the family in devotions morning and evening and all attended church on Sunday. John’s first ministry was in the slums knocking on doors to share the gospel. Hearing of Pacific islanders without the gospel, he determined to go regardless of the dangers. He took his bride, Mary Ann, to the South Pacific island of Tanna where his son was born. Both his wife and baby soon died. Heartbroken and in tears, he buried them with his own hands. Alone and lonely, Paton went from village to village sharing God’s love in Christ. He remarried and on the island Aniwa where the Patons planted a church, started schools, build orphanages, and translated the Bible. Uninformed persons think Christians ignorant. A large part of the world would be ignorant, savage, in poverty and despair if it weren’t for Christian missions, Bible translations, schools, orphanages, and hospitals.

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J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937). Machen defended Christianity in a day of deflection. “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel,” he warned. Educated at Johns Hopkins and Princeton University’s, he became professor at Princeton Seminary. He believed the fundamentals of theology but rejected fundamentalism’s narrow anti-intellectualism and legalistic tendencies. He was a scholar’s scholar who didn’t retreat from learning and thinking when liberal forces took over American universities and pulpits. Liberals forced him to leave Princeton. So he founded Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. His liberal adversaries couldn’t dismiss his thoughtful logical arguments. In Christianity and Liberalism, he showed liberalism not an updated version of Christianity but a new humanist religion. It was deceptive using the Christian vocabulary but denying the Trinity and deity of Christ. He advised Christians must study hard, think well, and defend the faith or they will lose the cultural war. Cultural Christians accommodate secularism and forsake biblical faith. In effect, secular humanism makes us soulless dirt without foundation for human dignity, rights, freedom, truth, and ethics. It brings chaos and opens the door to tyranny.

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C.S. Lewis (1989-1963). Clive Staples Lewis was born and raised in a Christian home but became an atheist as a teen. He interpreted his mother’s death as God rejecting his prayers. Lewis became professor of English literature at Oxford and Cambridge. He noticed the writings brilliant colloquies he admired were Christian and he couldn’t escape the evidence and logic that supported the gospel. His vast knowledge, vivid imagination and literary skill propelled him into world fame. He appealed to human imagination as well as intellect in his children’s stories, popular apologetics, and scholarly studies. Among his works is Mere Christianity, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, The Problem of Pain, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Screwtape Letters. Lewis published thirty-nine books, hundreds of poems, essays, pamphlets, short stories, and critical reviews. The influence of Christianity’s most popular defender is beyond calculation.

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