Saturday, January 22, 2011

A Surprising Find

In the readings for my church history class at Luther Rice I came across this quote. "Pentecost was indeed a day of the Lord; and through hardly to be called the birthday of the church, for that had its beginnings in Jesus' association with the disciples, it marked an epoch in the proclamation of the Gospel, in the disciples' conviction of Christ's presence, and in the increase of adherents to the new faith." (Italics mine) (Walker, Williston, A History of the Christian Church, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1918).  Old-fashioned, traditional Baptists have long asserted that the birth of the Church did not occur on Pentecost, but rather during the personal ministry of Jesus.  I was thrilled to see this quote from a professor at Yale, which was founded as a Congregationalist school, upholding the traditional Baptist position.