This sermon was preached at the 172nd anniversary of the founding of the Scotland Presbyterian Church in Junction City, Arkansas.
It focused on what Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Evangelical Anglicans have in common with their roots in the Second Reformation in Great Britain. The Second Reformation bull-dozed down the traditions of men and sought to build preaching, methods, and government strictly on the Bible.
What drove these British immigrants was not fundamentally to escape from Britain, it was to establish Bible-based churches and communities and to reach the lost.
One example cited was that of Joseph Willis, born in North Carolina of a British father and a Lumbee Indian slave woman.
Willis served under General Francis Marion, "The Swamp Fox," only to discover after his return from the Revolutionary War that his uncle had broken his promise to Willis' father, deprived Willis of his inheritance, and kept him a slave.
In the course of time, Willis sensed God's call to preach the gospel and was ordained by the Mississippi Baptist Association. He experienced much persecution from the Spanish authorities, but in spite of that he crossed the Mississippi River and began to establish Baptist churches in Louisiana beginning in 1804, following the Louisiana Purchase.
He died around the age of 95 and was still preaching, sometimes from his bed. He is rightly called the "father of the Baptist churches" of Louisiana and is the literal "father of the Red Bones."
This is the same spirit that motivated the settlers who established the Scotland Community, three miles due west of Junction City, right on the Louisiana-Arkansas line. |
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