Our blog is hosted by the PCA Historical Center, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Wayne Sparkman, director of the Historical Center, authored a few of the entries for our blog in 2012 and beginning in 2013 he will be the one writing most of the material posted here at This Day in Presbyterian History. Mr. Sparkman is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary (M.A.R.) and Covenant Theological Seminary (M.Div. and Th.M.). He has been the director of the PCA Historical Center since 1998 and maintains standing as a Certified Archivist.
Throughout 2012, most of the entries for this historical devotional were written by the Rev. Dr. David T. Myers. Now retired from the gospel ministry, Mr. Myers grew up in a Christian home and received Jesus as Lord and Savior at an early age. His father, the Rev. Dr. David K. Myers was one of a handful of Presbyterian ministers who was deposed for refusing to obey the Mandate of 1934 of the Presbyterian Church, USA to “cease and desist” from supporting the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions. An original member of the Presbyterian Church of America in 1936, and then the Bible Presbyterian Church in 1938, the graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary in 1929 went on to serve his Lord and Savior as a pastor, evangelist, Army chaplain, and theological professor for 50 plus years. Growing up in that heritage, the author then has a real love for Presbyterian history. With his wife Carolyn, he served the Lord in Canada and the United States, planting three churches in the Midwest and two established churches in Pennsylvania, before retiring in 2004 to central Pennsylvania. He has one married daughter, and five grandsons.
[Note: David's father, the Rev. David K. Myers, wrote an autobiography titled Preaching on the Plains. For information on how to order a copy of this most interesting autobiography, click here. The table of contents, and later, several sample chapters, were posted here.]
But back to David T. Myers, he has a B.A. degree from Highland College, a M.Div from Faith Theological Seminary, and a D.Min from Covenant Theological Seminary. He has written two books on Christians of the Civil War, and a book on Reformed Worship. He offers this internet book on Presbyterianism to the Lord’s people in both pulpit and pew in Presbyterian and Reformed congregations in the United States.
Pete and I will be looking foward to your website.
David: I’ve enjoyed the posts so far. Have you thought of getting a page on a social network? Your subscribers would automatically be spreading the articles because their friends would ne alterted to them too.
Great site and service!
AMR
Dear Dr. Myers: I live in Lawrence (KS) and so I am a friend of Ann Stegall. Thanks for putting this together, and I am grateful Ann alerted me to it. Makes me wonder what other treasures I am missing “out there” … even as I know there is plenty of garbage! I have a gift/curse for seeing typos … and I offer this just in case you find other ways to use this great content. I think you mean EVENTUALLY in the sentence below. BUT I praise God for all your articles which do glorify God for His grace in our Presbyterian heritage. ~ Pastor John McF. (of the RPCNA)
So vocal was he that evidentially the church became known as “The Church of the Patriots.”
Thanks for catching that. It is now corrected.
It appears that this is a WordPress website. I had a quick suggestion to make these great articles more searchable for hopefully other Presbyterians and seekers! The URLs of each articles needs to have the Title of the article to be searched better by the Search Engines. Example: thisday.pcahistory.org/Civil-War-Presbyterian-Stonewall-Jackson
Hope this makes sense. Just a quick settings change within the settings of your site.
Dear Sir
In your comment about Principal Witherspoon, you call him Jonathan. Is this correct?
In every source I have been able to find, he is called John.
Could you correct this.
Have you ever looked at the front of the old Presbyterian publications building on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia?
The building is now a bank.
It has a stone front with shields of all of the reformed groups which went to make up the
Presbyterian connection in the Middle Colonies. Very interesting indeed.
Your site is very interesting. Perhaps some comments about Presbyterians other than Americans would be interesting too.
Janet MacDougall
You are of course correct. It is John Witherspoon. To have slipped and called him Jonathan, I must have Had Jonathan Edwards in the back of my mind.
For at least this first year, we have decided to focus almost entirely on American Presbyterians. Perhaps next year, Lord willing, we will begin to branch out a bit.
I left a reply on May 9th–not sure my name or contact was with it, so will leave a note here for you as well. Harry Meiners was my father. I can supply the needed info you mentioned in the article about him if you’d like to contact me. Thank you!
Jo
Thank you, Jo. I’m simply slow this week in tending to comments and all.
Yes, Paul was very gracious to send along your mother’s files of missionary prayer letters, which were most helpful. There was some duplication of material, but also a great deal of content which we did not previously have in the Historical Center.
I look forward to discussing all of this with you further. Please use my email address, archivist {AT} pcahistory /DOT/ org.