The Very Breath of God
Passage: 2 Timothy 3:12-17
Harvard College was founded in 1636 in Boston only 16 years after the Pilgrims got off the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It was founded to be a school to train Christian ministers.
The original motto, “Truth (Veritas) for Christ (Christo) and the Church (Ecclesiae).”
Harvard’s “Rules and Precepts,” adopted in 1646:
- Every one shall so exercise himselfe in reading the Scriptures twice a day, that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein, both in Theoreticall observations of Language and Logick, and in practical and spiritual truths.
All the Ivy League schools were founded by Puritan Christians, English speaking Reformed Calvinists to train ministers. Nearly 400 years later they are all some of the most secular, even anti-Christian institutions in America.
What happened? Why such a famine of the Word of God?
Hosea 13:6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.
Materialism, false doctrine and liberalism led those schools, and New England, and America into darkness. Desires for unity and peace lead to pluralism and compromise. Affluence leads to softness which leads to lukewarmness. Cultural accommodation leads to theological and spiritual drift. It dulls the Gospel.
There but for the grace of God go you and I. How many of us have gotten soft, comfortable, lukewarm and dull, have compromised ourselves to bend to the winds of the culture?
It is easy to point out there at others, at all those liberals or pagans or compromisers. But what about me. Have I examined my own life? Do I have a real relationship with my Creator in whose image I am created? Do I make plans and decisions based on my own will rather than His will? Am I drifting, is my heart growing cold from neglect and in attention?
As I called us to more serious and earnest prayer last week through Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, this week I continue our new year’s focus by reminding us of the treasure and gift given to us in God’s Word.