Upcoming Autumn Banquet
Heritage Baptist College will host the Annual Fall Banquet at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, November 7th. This year, we will again have the Fall Banquet on the Hopewell Campus, but the food will be catered this year by MCL Cafeteria.
Dr. Dave Martin of Cincinnati, OH will speak that evening. Brother Martin has been in gospel ministry for over 50 years, with 38 years being a senior pastor. For 20 years Dr. Martin pastored in Pennsylvania and later he shepherded the Lighthouse Baptist Church of Winchester, VA. Dr. Martin brings with him a wealth of knowledge and musical talent.
Come and enjoy his message, along with a night of good food, Christian music, and great fellowship. Please call Heritage Baptist College to make a reservation. (317) 738-3791 or (317) 833-0172.
One Man Changed the Course
Approximately eight miles southeast of Heritage Baptist College, stands a unique sign, probably the only one of its kind in America. The marker signifies a small cemetery that is in the middle of the road.
When Johnson County decided to lay out East County Rd. 400S, over 100 years ago, the path of the roadway placed it directly through a small cemetery. The workman removed the graves, except the grave of pioneer Nancy Barnett (d. Dec. 1, 1831) and six of her relatives.
Nancy Barnett’s grandson, Daniel Doty, refused to allow the county workers to remove her body. His grandmother had wanted to be buried on that knoll above Sugar Creek, and he would honor her wish. He sat by the plot with a shotgun, warning the grave diggers to stay away.
Doty ended up winning the standoff. The road was eventually built, the grave remained, but the highway was diverted around either side of the protected plot. In 1912, a concrete slab was placed over the mound and years later a historical sign. In 2016, because of a farm equipment accident, the county decided to change the large earthen mound. The bodies were dug up, the roadbed deepened, and the bodies were reinterred under a streamlined marker.
In southern Johnson County, in the middle of a farming community, stands a lone concrete slab in the middle of the road - a tribute to a pioneer and her kin. The setting also is a lasting reminder to the determination of one man. A man who saw his heritage challenged, and stood up to the prevailing flood of pressure.
One person can accomplish what many think is the impossible, or at least the improbable.
The Unknown Tomorrow
At 40 years of age, John Adams lay deathly sick of a fever, far away from his family, and in Holland. His illness would last nearly six weeks.
This ardent Revolutionary Patriot, had helped to draft the Declaration of Independence five years before, and now in Europe, he had been removed from his family for nearly a year.
His political task was to raise money and to secure recognition of the United States with the Dutch government.
In that early fall of 1781, sick, and unsuccessful, he wrote to Congress asking to be recalled, stating that his mission was “useless.”
What Mr. Adams didn’t know, was that right at that moment, the Revolutionary War, which had gone badly for the Americans, was changing. On Friday, October 19, 1781 (244 years ago), British General Cornwalis surrendered his 7,000 troops to General George Washington.
John Adams had long pressed the French for a strong naval presence in America. At exactly the right time and place, Admiral de Grasse arrived with a French fleet of 28 large warships which stopped Cornwalis’ escape. However, the good news did not arrive across the Atlantic Ocean for a month.
Even during Mr. Adam’s discouragement, all was going forth as God ordained it. In a matter of weeks John Adam’s mission also became a success. In the following year he served with the American delegation that drafted and signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. (McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001 [p. 271]).
God had everything going forward in His plan. The Bible illustrates this in another way in the life of Daniel as he waited for God to answer.
We have only to trust the Lord, follow Him, or if He so chooses, simply wait.
False Security
It was a clear night in the early hours of October 14, 1939, as the British home fleet lay anchored in its major naval base of Scapa Flow. A host of ships which included two battleships, an aircraft carrier, cruisers, and destroyers, besides all types of coastal defense, made the British sleep self-assured in their own territory, during the first weeks of WWII.
Unbeknownst to them, the German submarine U-47 sailed untouched into the channel and then toward the naval base. The captain, Lieutenant Gunther Prien, had spotted a careless breach in the British defense, and brought his sub undetected into the armada of ships at anchor.
Quickly the U-47 fired five torpedoes, and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak, while escaping unhurt out to sea. In a matter of minutes, the HMS Royal Oak turned over and sank, taking down with it 800 sailors, 23 officers, and one admiral.
The German propaganda machine had an early victory to exploit. Grudgingly, it was conceded by the British that the HMS Royal Oak had been sunk in what should have been Britain’s best protected waters. (Hoyt, Edwin. U-boats: McGraw Hill: New York. pp.26-33)
I am often reminded of this verse: Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. - I Corinthians 10:12