The general purpose of this course of lessons has been set forth in the introduction to the Student's Text Book. There is a tendency in the modern Church to neglect the study of Bible history. Such neglect will inevitably result in a loss of power. The gospel is a record of something that has happened, and uncertainty about the gospel is fatal weakness. Furthermore the historical study of the apostolic age—that age when divine revelation established the great principles of the Church's lif...

At the time when the Old Testament narrative closes, the Jews were under the rule of Persia. The Persian control continued for about one hundred years more, and then gave way to the empire of Alexander the Great. Alexander was king of Macedonia, a country to the north of Greece; but the language and culture of his court were Greek. After Greece proper had been conquered by Alexander’s father, Philip, Alexander himself proceeded to the conquest of the East. The Persian Empire fell in 331 B....

What is Faith?By J. Gresham MachenNarrated by David K. MartinIn this book J. Gresham Machen argues that Christian faith is a “thoroughly reasonable” response—worked in the believer by the power God — to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He distinguishes between a trusting faith in Christ and a commitment to “the principles of Jesus.” “It is one thing to hold that the ethical principles which Jesus enunciated will solve the problems of society, and quit...

Was Christianity changing toward a more liberal form in the Protestant church? Was it slipping away from the true orthodoxy of the Bible and Christ?In the early 20th Century J. Gresham Machen, a theologian at Princeton and later as co-founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, believed this was the case and put his mark on paper with his book Christianity & Liberalism. In 1923 Machen brought light to the issue of a changing Church.Is this book important?

It seems to me, as I stand here before you today, that there is one blessing in these days of defection and unbelief which we have come to value as we never valued it before. That is the blessing of Christian fellowship in the presence of a hostile world, and in the presence of a visible Church which too often has departed from the Word of God. Today, during the three meetings of this League, in the portion of the meetings which has been allotted to me, I am to have the privilege of delive...

AN account of personal experiences may be interesting for one or two reasons: (1) because the writer is in some way remarkable; (2) because, not being at all remarkable, he may be able to set forth in a concrete way the experience of a considerable body of men. It is for the latter reason, if at all, that the present little sketch may justify its place in the volume of which it is to form a part. I have been asked to contribute to the volume, I suppose, in order that I may show by the exam...

At the very beginning, I may as well tell you plainly that I am not going to talk about the topics that are usually regarded as most timely just now. I am not going to talk to you about the gold standard or about unemployment or about the NRA or about the Brain Trust. Possibly some of you may discover that certain things that I may say have a bearing upon those topics, but those topics are not the topics about which I am going to talk.Instead, I am going to talk to you about God, a...

Machen's "New Testament Greek", was by far the most used Greek introductory grammar in the 20th century. First published in 1923, it quickly became the most used grammar in the English speaking world. Many students today still find Machen's presentation of Greek to be the clearest and most helpful. This text reproduces Machen's entire text with a modern typeset and includes a Student's Answer Guide to all chapter exercises.Mechen assumes no prior knowledge of Greek and starts with ...

How will the Christian faith survive in a skeptical world? Modernists in the early twentieth century considered the solution to be clear. Thinking the church needed to be rescued from irrelevance, they laid aside unpopular teachings from the Bible and recast Christianity simply as a way of life. Resisting these attempts, J. Gresham Machen gave an unbending response: Christian doctrine isn’t the problem—unbelief is.This one-hundredth anniversary edition of Christianity and Liberalis...

Some years ago the world of New Testament scholarship was startled by the conversion of Adolf von Harnack[1] to the traditional view of the authorship of Luke-Acts. The book of Acts, Harnack concluded, was actually written by Luke, a companion of Paul. And what is more, it was written at about A.D. 60, or a little later, near the point of time where the narrative breaks off. Thus with regard to the date of the book the leading representative of modern “liberalism” had become more conservat...

The purpose of this book is not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible, in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself. Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time; there are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Francis L. Patton has aptly called a “condition of low visibility.” Clear-cut definition of terms in religious mat...

In recent years it has become customary to base discussions of the origin of Christianity upon the apostle Paul. Jesus Himself, the author of the Christian movement, wrote nothing—at least no writings of His have been preserved. The record of His words and deeds is the work of others, and the date and authorship and historical value of the documents in which that record is contained are the subject of persistent debate. With regard to the genuineness of the principal epistles of Paul, on t...