To Preachers

"Be a fool for Christ's sake if this will win them, or be a scholar, if that will be more likely to impress them. Spare neither labour in the study, prayer in the closet, nor zeal in the pulpit. If men do not judge their souls to be worth a thought, compel them to see that their minister is of a very different opinion."

C.H. Spurgeon on "Conversion As Our Aim", Lectures to My Students, Zondervan Publishing House, 1954, pg. 345.

Reflections by Will Rogers

In light of our upcoming elections I thought I'd share this tidbit from Will Rogers. Don't read anything into it just enjoy it for what it is. I'm kind of a fan of his type of wit and philosophizing even though he had political and social tendency's often the polar opposite of mine. Keep in mind this was written in 1925 and is an excerpt from an article "Slogans, Slogans Everywhere".

"Everything nowadays is a saying, or a slogan. You can't go to bed, you can't get up, you can't brush your teeth, without doing it to some advertising slogan. Even the government is in on it. The Navy has a slogan: "Join the Navy and see the World!" You join, and all you see for the first 4 years is a bucket of soap suds and a mop, and some brass polish.

Congress even has slogans:
"Why sleep at home, when you can sleep in Congress?"
"Be a Politician - no training necessary"
"It's easier to fool 'em in Washington than at home - so why not be a Senator."

Even if you want to get married, a sign will stare you in the face: "Two can live as cheap as one." That, next to "Law Enforcement", is the biggest bunk slogan ever invented. Then the preacher says: "Let no man put asunder," and two-thirds of the married world is asunder in less than three months.

Last election, out came the slogan makers again. Some fool that didn't know American politics had J.W.Davis run on "Honesty". Well, that had no more place in politics than I have on the Harvard faculty. It was one of the poorest selections of a slogan that was ever invented. Coolidge ran on "Economy", and "Common Sense", which is always good for the boobs. It's like getting up at a dinner and saying: "I am proud to be here". It's an old gag, but it always goes over. Now you know "Common Sense" is not an issue in politics. It's an affliction. And as for "Honesty", neither is that an issue, it's a miracle. And the returns showed that there was 8 million more people in the United States who had the "Common Sense" not to believe that there was "Honesty" in politics. And as soon as the "Economy" boys got in, they raised Congress' and the Senate's salary and redecorated the White House. So away goes another slogan!

You see, a fool slogan can get you into anything. But you never heard of a slogan getting you out of anything. It takes either bullets, hard work or money to get you out of anything. Nobody has ever invented a slogan to use instead of paying your taxes.

But they will fall for 'em. You shake a slogan at an American, and it's just like showing a hungry dog a bone. We even die by slogans. I saw an undertaker's sign the other day, which read: "There is a satisfaction in dying, if you know the Woodlawn Brothers are to bury you." "

A Will Rogers Treasury, compiled by Bryan and Francis Sterling, Published by Bonanza Books - 1986.

The Huguenot Cross

Not long after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenot Cross came into general use amongst Huguenots as confirmation of the wearer's faith. The symbolism of the Huguenot cross is particularly rich.

The cross was designed in the form of a Maltese cross: four isosceles triangles meeting at the centre. Each triangle has, at the periphery, two rounded points at the corners. These points are regarded as signifying the eight Beatitudes of Matthew 5: 3-10. Suspended from the lower triangle by a ring of gold is a pendant dove with spreaded wings in downward flight, signifying the Holy Spirit. In times of persecution a pearl, symbolizing a teardrop, replaced the dove (Revelation 21:4).

The four arms of the Maltese cross are sometimes regarded as the heraldic form of the four petals of the Lily of France (golden yellow irises, signifying the Mother Country of France) which grows in the south of France. The lily is also the symbol of purity. The arms symbolize the four Gospels.

The arms are joined together by four Fleur-de-Lis, each with 3 petals; the total of twelve petals of the Fleur-de-Lis signify the twelve apostles. Between each Fleur-de-Lis and the arms of the Maltese Cross with which it is joined, an open space in the form of a heart, which symbolizes loyalty and the sufferings of Christ, suggests the seal of the French Reformer, John Calvin.

Information courtesy of www.answers.com

History of the Huguenots - Part 2 - Conclusion

The Edict of Nantes was signed by Henry IV on April 13th, 1598, which brought an end to the Wars of Religion.

The Huguenots were allowed to practice their faith in 20 specified French "free" cities. France became united and a decade of peace followed. After Henry IV was murdered in 1610, however, the persecution of the "dissenters" resumed in all earnestness under the guidance of Cardinal Richelieu, whose favorite project was the extermination of the Huguenots.

(conclusion)

Henry IV's weakling sun, Louis the Thirteenth, refused them the privileges which had been granted to them by the Edict of Nantes; and, when reminded of the claims they had, if the promises of Henry the Third and Henry the Fourth were to be regarded, he answered that "the first-named monarch feared them, and the latter loved them; but I neither fear nor love them." The Huguenot free cities were lost one after the other after they were conquered by the forces of Cardinal Richelieu, and the last and most important stronghold, La Rochelle, fell in 1629 after a siege lasting a month.

Louis XIV (the Sun King, 1643-1715) began to apply his motto l'état c'est moi ("I am the state") and introduced the infamous Dragonnades - the billeting of dragoons in Huguenot households. He began with a policy of une foi, un loi, un roi (one faith, one law, one king) and revoked the Edict of Nantes on 22 October 1685. The large scale persecution of the Huguenots resumed. Protestant churches and the houses of "obstinates" were burned and destroyed, and their bibles and hymn books burned. Emigration was declared illegal. Many Huguenots were burned at the stake. Many Huguenots who did not find their death in local prisons or execution on the wheel of torture, were shipped to sea to serve their sentences as galley slaves, either on French galley ships, or sold to Turkey as galley slaves.

A vivid account of the life of galley-slaves in France is given in Jean Marteilhes's Memoirs of a Protestant, translated by Oliver Goldsmith, which describes the experiences of one of the Huguenots who suffered after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Every Huguenot place of worship was to be destroyed; every minister who refused to conform was to be sent to the Hôpitaux de Forçats at Marseilles and at Valance. If he had been noted for his zeal he was to be considered "obstinate," and sent to slavery for life in such of the West-Indian islands as belonged to the French. The children of Huguenot parents were to be taken from them by force, and educated by the Roman Catholic monks or nuns.

At least 250 000 French Huguenots fled to countries such as Switzerland, Germany, England, America, the Netherlands, Poland and South Africa, where they could enjoy religious freedom. As many were killed in France itself. Between 1618 and 1725 between 5,000 and 7,000 Huguenots reached the shores of America. Those who came from the French speaking south of Belgium, an area known as Wallonia, are generally known as Walloons (as opposed to Huguenots) in the United States.

The organised large scale emigration of Hugenots to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa occurred during 1688 - 1689. Most of them settled in an area now known as Franschhoek ("French Corner"), some 70 km outside Cape Town, where many farms still bear their original French names.

A century later the promulgation of the Edict of Toleration on 28 November 1787 partially restored the civil and religious rights of the Huguenots in France.


Excerpted from Huguenot Web Site www.huguenot.ws

History of the Huguenots - Part 1

I enjoy history! which may seem strange to most, but I am convinced that our collective ignorance of the past is what is causing us to drift in the present, and will condemn us in the future.

My paternal uncle is the historian in our family and I have seemed to have inherited his phobia. In tracing our family tree I ran into a problem. Our current surname had been changed from whatever it was to what it is now. Why the name change? It seems that my family was of Huguenot descent and had been one of the thousands of families that fled to Switzerland during the many Huguenot persecutions in France and when they arrived in their new home their names were changed to adapt to the circumstance of their new location. So, our family has inherited a new name and a link to those persecuted Christians of the past that fled to religious freedom. I am happy to be part of that heritage both biologically and spiritually. And, I have many relatives living in Switzerland today who enjoy the connection with those French martyrs. So, with somewhat of a personal bias I will share with you some of my ancestral history and will, from time-to-time share information relating to the history of other Christian martyrs.

The Huguenots were French Protestants who were members of the Reformed Church which was established in 1550 by John Calvin.

The origin of the name Huguenot is uncertain, but dates from approximately 1550 when it was used in court cases against "heretics" (dissenters from the Roman Catholic Church). O.I.A. Roche, in his book The Days of the Upright, a History of the Huguenots, writes that "Huguenot" is

"a combination of a Flemish and a German word. In the Flemish corner of France, Bible students who gathered in each other's houses to study secretly were called Huisgenooten, or "house fellows," while on the Swiss and German borders they were termed Eidgenossen, or "oath fellows," that is, persons bound to each other by an oath. Gallicized into "Huguenot," often used deprecatingly, the word became, during two and a half centuries of terror and triumph, a badge of enduring honor and courage."

As nickname and even abusive name it's use was banned in the regulations of the Edict of Nantes which Henry IV (Henry of Navarre, who himself earlier was a Huguenot) issued in 1598. The French Protestants themselves preferred to refer to themselves as "réformees" (reformers) rather than "Huguenots".

It was much later that the name "Huguenot" became an honorary one of which their descendants are proud.

A general edict which encouraged the extermination of the Huguenots was issued on January 29th, 1536 in France. On March 1st, 1562 some 1200 Huguenots were slain at Vassy, France. This ignited the the Wars of Religion which would rip apart, devastate, and bankrupt France for the next three decades.

During the infamous St Bartholomew Massacre of the night of 23/24 August, 1572 more than 8,000 Huguenots, including Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, Governor of Picardy and leader and spokesman of the Huguenots, were murdered in Paris. It happened during the wedding of Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, to Marguerite de Valois (daughter of Catherine de Medici), when thousands of Huguenots converged on Paris for the wedding celebrations.

It was Catherine de Medici who persuaded her weakling son Charles IX to order the mass murder, which lasted three days and spread to the countryside. On Sunday morning August 24th, 1572 she personally walked through the streets of Paris to inspect the carnage. Henry of Navarre's life was spared when he pretended to support the Roman Catholic faith. In 1593 he made his "perilous leap"and abjured his faith in July 1593, and 5 years later he was the undisputed monarch as King Henry IV (le bon Henri, the good Henry) of France.

When the first rumours of the massacre reached the Vatican in Rome on 2 September 1572, pope Gregory XIII was jubilant and wanted bonfires to be lit in Rome. He was persuaded to wait for the official communication. The very morning of the day that he received the confirmed news, the pope held a consistory and announced that "God had been pleased to be merciful". Then with all the cardinals he repaired to the Church of St. Mark for the Te Deum, and prayed and ordered prayers that the Most Christian King might rid and purge his entire kingdom (of France) of the Huguenot plague.

On 8 September 1572 a procession of thanksgiving took place in Rome, and the pope, in a prayer after mass, thanked God for having "granted the Catholic people a glorious triumph over a perfidious race" (gloriosam de perfidis gentibus populo catholico loetitiam tribuisti).

Gregory XIII engaged Vasari to paint scenes in one of the Vatican apartments of the triumph of the Most Christian King over the Huguenots. He had a medal struck representing an exterminating angel smiting the Huguenots with his sword, the inscription reading: Hugonottorium strages (Huguenot conspirators). In France itself, the French magistracy ordered the admiral to be burned in effigy and prayers and processions of thanksgiving on each recurring 24th August, out of gratitude to God for the victory over the Huguenots.

The Edict of Nantes was signed by Henry IV on April 13th, 1598, which brought an end to the Wars of Religion.

The Huguenots were allowed to practice their faith in 20 specified French "free" cities. France became united and a decade of peace followed. After Henry IV was murdered in 1610, however, the persecution of the "dissenters" resumed in all earnestness under the guidance of Cardinal Richelieu, whose favorite project was the extermination of the Huguenots.

(To be continued)

Excerpted from Huguenot Web Site www.huguenot.ws

On Receiving Criticism

"A sensible friend who will unsparingly criticize you from week to week will be a far greater blessing to you than a thousand undiscriminating admirers if you have sense enough to bear his treatment, and grace enough to be thankful for it. When I was preaching at the Surrey Gardens, an unknown censor of great ability used to send me a weekly list of my mispronunciation and other slips of speech. He never signed his name, and that was my only cause of complaint against him, for he left me in a debt which I could not acknowledge. I take this opportunity of confessing my obligations to him, for with genial temper, and an evident desire to benefit me, he marked down most relentlessly everything which he supposed me to have said incorrectly. Concerning some of these corrections he was in error himself, but for the most part he was right, and his remarks enabled me to perceive and avoid many mistakes. I looked for his weekly memoranda with much interest, and I trust I am all the better for them. If I had repeated a sentence two or three Sundays before, he would say, "See same expression in such a sermon," mentioning the number and page. He remarked on one occasion that I too often quoted the line, "Nothing in my hands I bring," and, he added, "We are sufficiently informed of the vacuity of your hands." He demanded my authority for calling a man covechus; and so on. Possibly some young men might have been discouraged, if not irritated, by such severe criticisms, but they would have been very foolish, for in resenting such correction they would have been throwing away a valuable aid to progress. No money can purchase outspoken honest judgment, and when we can get it for nothing let us utilize it to the fullest extent. The worst of it is that of those who offer their judgments few are qualified to form them, and we shall be pestered with foolish, impertinent remarks, unless we turn to them all the blind eye and the deaf ear."

Lectures to My Students, C.H. Spurgeon,
Zondervan Publishing House, 1954 Edition, Pg. 332

Pragmatism: Trend or Trap?

Just posted at the Pulpit Magazine blogsite is an article by Pastor John MacArthur regarding the pragmatic approach in today's post-Christian churches. Very concise and insightful. I've posted a few snippets for your immediate gratification but be sure to read the entire article yourself.

"As Christians, we are called to trust what the Lord says, preach that message to others, and leave the results to Him. But many have set that aside. Seeking relevancy and success, they have welcomed the pragmatic approach and have received the proverbial Trojan horse.

Church leaders reacted to the world's indifference, not by a return to strong biblical preaching that emphasized sin and repentance, but by a pragmatic approach to "doing" church — an approach driven more by marketing, methodology, and perceived results than by biblical doctrine. The new model of ministry revolved around making sinners feel comfortable and at ease in the church, then selling them on the benefits of becoming a Christian.

Even the church's ministry to its own has changed. "Whatever works," the mantra of pragmatism, has become the new banner of evangelicalism.

Many of today's church leaders have bought into the subtlety of pragmatism without recognizing the dangers it poses. Instead of attacking orthodoxy head on, evangelical pragmatism gives lip service to the truth while quietly undermining the foundations of doctrine.

First, there is in vogue today a trend to make the basis of faith something other than God's Word.

Second, evangelical pragmatism tends to move the focus of faith away from God's Son.

The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel...fantasy faith. This false gospel appeals unabashedly to the flesh.

Easy-believism... has done much to popularize "believing" but little to provoke sincere faith.

Third, today's Christianity is infected with a tendency to view the result of faith as something less than God's standard of holy living. By downplaying the importance of holy living–both by precept and by example–the biblical doctrine of conversion is undermined.

If we fight to maintain doctrinal purity with an emphasis on biblical preaching and biblical ministry, we can conquer external attacks. But if error is allowed into the church, many more churches will slide down the grade to suffer the same fate as the denominations that listened to, yet ignored, Spurgeon's impassioned appeal."

By John MacArthur posted July 24th, 2008 at Pulpit Magazine (www.sfpulpit.com.) Click on link to view entire post.