Magazine - Lamb & Lion Ministries

Trial by Fire
The message of Elijah for today.
Dr. Peter Marshall
(Dr. Peter Marshall was the pastor of the New York Avenue
Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. from 1937 to the time
of his death at age 47 in 1949. During the last two years of his
life, he also served as the Chaplain of the United States Senate.
Dr. Marshall was born in Scotland in 1902. He arrived in this
country as a penniless immigrant in 1927. He worked for a year
in New Jersey and then was enticed to travel south to Birmingham,
Alabama, where a former schoolmate from his native Scotland
had immigrated.
From there, members of his Sunday school class paid his way
to attend a seminary in the Atlanta area. He graduated in 1931
and pastored churches in Covington and Atlanta, Georgia,
before being called to the historic “President’s Church” in
Washington, D.C.
His wife, Catherine, wrote a best-selling biography about his
life entitled, A Man Called Peter. It was later made into a very
successful motion picture with the same name.
This sermon was preached at the St. Charles Presbyterian
Church in New Orleans, Louisiana on March 11, 1944.)
“If the Lord be God, follow him, but if Baal,
then follow him.” — 1 Kings 18:21
The setting of the text is one of the most dramatic in the Old
Testament. The leaders of the nation, including the king, had
come together to make a great decision. It was a national emergency,
something had to be done. Elijah the prophet had called
them to meet on Mount Carmel to settle no less a question than
whom they should worship. It was a day of choice, a day of
destiny.
William Penn said that “Men must be governed by God or
they will be ruled by tyrants.” Here then was an ancient Hebrew
prophet facing the very same issue, and making his people face
it with him.
A Blessed Heritage
They all knew the history of their nation, how that their
fathers had come out of the wilderness, out of bondage into a
new land of pioneers. Behind them were great leaders — Moses
and Aaron and Joshua — men who had been led by God. They
had set up not a democracy, but a theocracy, a state governed by
God.
The true God and His holy law had been written into the
nation’s constitution. The Ten Commandments had been to them
March - April 2007 The Lamplighter page 3