Read history and see how the covenanters stood and died rather than give up to the enemy. Are we satisfied to be degenerate sons of great fathers? Consider A. B. Simpson who walked the shores of the Atlantic Ocean with cardboard in the soles of his shoes because he did not have money to buy new ones. He prayed and groaned in spirit and cried to God for people of all nations who had not heard the gospel. He prayed "Oh God, I believe Jesus Christ thy Son is the same yesterday, today and forever." We are his descendants, but we ought to spend a day in sackcloth and ashes. At 36, Simpson was a Presbyterian preacher so sick that he said, "I feel I could fall into the grave when I have a funeral." He could not preach for months at a time because of his sickness. He went to a little camp meeting in the woods and heard a quartet sing, "No man can work like Jesus/ No man can work like Him." Simpson went off among the pine trees with that ringing in his heart: "Nobody can work like Jesus; nothing is too hard for Jesus. No man can work like Him." The learned, stiff-necked Presbyterian threw himself down upon the pine needles and said, "If Jesus Christ is what they said He was in the song, heal me." The Lord healed him, and he lived to be 76 years old. Simpson founded a society that is now one of the largest evangelical denominations in the world, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. We are his descendants and we sing his songs. But are we going to allow ourselves to listen to that which will modify our faith, practices and beliefs, water down our gospel and dilute the power of the Holy Spirit? I, for one, am not!
