Word: churches
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...went to him at his inn to beg him to stay. Calvin declined. Farel roared at him: "You are simply following your own wishes, and I declare in the name of almighty God that if you refuse to take part in the Lord's task in this church, God will curse the quiet life you want for your studies!" Calvin was thoroughly frightened. "I felt," he wrote later, "as if God from heaven had laid his mighty hand on me to stop me from my course ... I did not continue my journey...
...eyes of God nothing but repulsive filth." But in his mercy, God has elected to save some by giving them the grace to believe in Christ, and through that faith to be justified and raised to eternal life. This is all God's doing; nothing man or church can do can save one who is not among God's predestined elect...
...which everyone was trying to prove himself chosen for salvation, and Calvin set up a city administration that was designed to keep Genevans on the straight and narrow. In groups of ten, Geneva's citizens were summoned to swear fealty to a 21-article confession of faith; church and state had separate powers, but in Calvin's theocracy no citizen of the state could be outside the authority of the church. The most famous of his opponents, Michael Servetus, was burned at the stake for his anti-Trinitarian views, though Calvin regretted the burning (he had wanted...
...modern Calvinism the stringencies of his teaching have been much modified -notably his doctrine of election, the role of civil authority as protector of the church, and the word-splitting intolerance of other Protestant doctrines. Today the churches of the Calvinist tradition are newly sensitive to the need for a united Protestantism. In an "Address to our Fellow Christians after 400 Years." 31 Calvinist leaders in Europe, Asia. Africa and the U.S. last week called for a new unity among the churches...
...that we claim for the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches we would lay on the altar. We offer it all to our fellow Christians for whatever use it may be to the whole Church. With the whole Church we hold ourselves alert for the surprises with which the Lord of history can alter the tempo of our renewal, and for the new forms with which an eternally recreating God can startle us while he secures his Church. And we strain ahead toward the great day when the richness of our joined memories will be a small sign of the strength...