Wake up, Church of America!

On September 23, 1779 a famous battle was fought and won against all odds. America was engaged in the Revolutionary War, and this battle was fought in the North Sea.

John Paul Jones was a Scotsman recruited by Benjamin Franklin and urged by the same to come to America to join the war. John Paul, although soft spoken and of calm demeanor, had much quiet strength and confidence. He thus favorably impressed John Adams, who was then serving on the Congressional Committee for the Continental Navy. Jones was eager to prove himself to the Americans, and they allowed him the freedom to choose his own style of fighting.

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Dying and Resurrecting with Christ

Just as no living man can be buried with a dead man, so no one who is still living to sin can be buried together in baptism with Christ, who has died to sin. Therefore, those who are hastening to baptism ought to take care as a matter of first importance that they should first die to sin. And in this way, they can be buried with Christ through baptism, so they might say, “Always carrying around the death of Jesus Christ in our body so that the life of Jesus Christ might be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

Now the manner in which the life of Jesus Christ is manifested in the body, Paul himself makes known when he says, “But no longer do I live, but Christ lives in me.” This is the same thing the apostle John also writes in his epistle when he says, “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Surely in that passage it is not the one who shall have spoken these syllables and pronounced them in this common confession that shall seem to be led by the Spirit of God, but the one who has fashioned his life in such a way and has produced the fruit of good works, such that he has demonstrated by the very devotion of his own works and thoughts that Christ has come in the flesh and that he is dead to sin and alive to God.

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Family Duty A Father's Duty to His Family

First...

As touching the spiritual state of his family; he should be very diligent and circumspect, doing his utmost endeavor both to increase faith where it is begun, and to begin it where it is not. For this reason, he should diligently and frequently lay before his household such things of God, out of his word, as are suitable for each particular.

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