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REFLECTIONS ON GRACE A HISTORY OF GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH CARLISLE, PENNSYLVANIA JAMES B. ESHELMAN 1 © James B. Eshelman 2007 2 INTRODUCTION istory is never best told by men. We do not see events fully as HGod sees them. Nor can we be certain that the most crucial contributors to those events have not been overlooked. There is a dark side to history which is better left untold. All the members of our church, including its leaders, “ . were once dark- ness” (Eph. 5:8). Scripture itself teaches us to be discreet. “It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret” (Eph. 5:12). If this darkness were fully recorded as God and the angels know it, then the grace and kindness of God toward such sinners would be the chief note of our account. Also we believe that the most amazing contributions to the work of God are unseen: Hours spent in the discipline of secret prayer; Lifelong application of God’s Word in family life; Patient catechiz- ing of children; Acts of charity, hospitality and sacrifice never mentioned; Witnessing and suffering for Jesus’ sake; Heart engage- ment in loving worship of God which is not measured by public appearances. The widow’s “very small copper coins” (Mark 12:42) mean more than the millionaire’s tithe. Only the Lord knows the heart that is most aglow with love for Him. Human history tends to shine the spotlight on generals, while within the ranks of their armies are countless heroes. It is not always the strategy of leaders but the grit and character of those who execute the plan which wins the day. In the middle of the twentieth century when Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle was brought into being by the Lord Jesus Christ, we were an ignorant and ill-formed assembly. But it pleased Him, who builds His Church with stones having life which He Himself has given to each one, to lead us quickly into a stream of revival by His Spirit. We did not create nor did we sustain the spiritual renewal. We were the recipients of its blessings, swept along in its currents. 3 The Lord of the Church was reviving confessional Christianity which had arisen in the era of the Reformers and the Puritans. Great leaders of this movement had been set in place both in Great Britain and in the United States before our church was begun. Reformation and Puritan literature was brought to our hands, by which the Spirit transformed our minds and our actions. Occasionally we were privileged to hear in our own church build- ing such men of God as David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, J. I. Packer, Iain Murray, and Sinclair Ferguson. Thus we tasted the experimen- tal Calvinism of England, Scotland and Wales. In addition American theologians such as Edward J. Young, Cornelius VanTil, Robert K. Rudolph, and others taught in our assemblies. We knew that these godly and humble men were gifts to the church at large. It was therefore our great privilege to serve the Lord alongside of those heirs of Old Princeton Seminary, who had been led by J. Gresham Machen away from liberalism’s corrup- tion of the church. In our corner of the Universal Church we sought to be faithful to what we were taught from God’s Word. Some few gave their lives to taking this gospel of the grace of God to other parts of the world. Many gave and prayed in support of these missions. Many also sought to be light and salt in the Carlisle area. We thank God that He kept us in the path in which He had called us to walk. We are amazed that He has used our meager efforts! Our greatest moments of joy and satisfaction have been those special times when our hearts burned within us (Luke 24:32) in recognition that the Lord Him- self was near. The glory, Lord, from first to last, Is due to Thee alone: Aught to ourselves we dare not take, Or rob Thee of Thy crown. Augustus Toplady WALTER J. CHANTRY, 2006 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS am greatly indebted to the following men and women for their Ikind and gracious assistance in helping to get this history printed: Douglas Taylor of Edinburgh, Scotland, for the typesetting. William Webster of Battle Ground, Washington, for printing the book. Betsy Richwine, GBC member, for line drawings of old church buildings. Elton Hannaman, a fellow Elder, for designing the cover. Sara Leone, my daughter, for reading the manuscript and making many grammatical and sentence structure changes. Jane Eshelman, my dear wife, for reading the manuscript several times and making numerous valuable suggestions for corrections and improvements. And finally I desire to dedicate this history of Grace Baptist Church to a carpenter, to a lawyer, and to a pastor: To Ernie Reisinger, to Roger Irwin, and to Walt Chantry who have been a source of enormous benefit and blessing to me by their wise, gracious, loving, and timely counsel, guidance, and friendship on the journey through this life to the celestial city. And all “. to the praise of His glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6). JIM ESHELMAN February 2007 5 6 REFLECTIONS ON GRACE nscribed on the cornerstone of the Grace Baptist Church build- Iing is a portion of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians taken from verse six of the first chapter, “ . to the praise of His glorious grace.” This phrase describes the purpose of the congregation since its inception on Sunday, December 9, 1951. Praise to God before a watching world has been a faithful and blessed mark of the people of God in all ages. Grace is that undeserved gift from God by which his people are saved and enabled to continue on the journey to the Celestial City. It is “glorious grace” and is, therefore, reflective of the glory of our great God. The few individuals who gathered on a Thursday evening in early December 1951 gave no thought to the fact that over fifty years later there would be a congregation of more than 275 members meeting together and at times reflecting on the events that flowed from the prayers and discussions of that evening. The source of that meeting in December 1951 can be traced back through several streams of history. One stream was the conversion of Ernest C. Reisinger about a decade earlier and his subsequent life and testimony. A second stream concerned the theological drift towards liberalism in mainline Protestant churches from the early 1900s. A third stream was the importance of the writings of Arthur W. Pink and the promotion of these writings and other books by I. C. Herendeen of the Bible Truth Depot in Swengel, Pennsylvania. To examine the first stream, we will consider a brief biography of Ernie. 7 ERNEST C. REISINGER A Brief Biography (See Ernest C. Reisinger – A Biography by Geoffrey Thomas, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, for an extensive biography of Mr Reisinger.) he oldest child of Ernest Gilbert Reisinger and Cordelia Weller TForney Reisinger, Ernest C. Reisinger was born on November 16, 1919. He had two brothers, Donald and John Gilbert, and one sister, Grace Esther. The Reisinger family lived in Harrisburg, Penn- sylvania, just east of Carlisle, until 1924 when they moved several miles northwest of Harrisburg into Perry County. They remained in Perry County for two years prior to moving to Carlisle. As a result of the Wall Street crash in 1929, Ernie’s father had a mental breakdown and was institutionalized the remainder of his life. With this tragic change in the Reisinger family, Ernie and John were placed in an orphanage. Donald lived with his uncle John in Perry County while Grace remained with her mother in Carlisle. After some time Ernie’s mother was able to bring her sons to live with her again. The Reisinger children attended Sunday School at Second Pres- byterian Church in Carlisle each week. The congregation provided the family with financial assistance for rent and food. Ernie’s Sun- day School teacher was Mr Harold S. Irwin, a professor at Dickinson School of Law. Mr Irwin seriously considered adopting Ernie as his son. As Ernie grew older, he stopped attending church and drifted to other places around the town such as the YMCA and the pool hall. At the age of eighteen Ernie became a trackman on the Pennsyl- vania Railroad. He married Mima Jane Shirley on March 30, 1938, and became a father before his twentieth birthday. Mima’s father was a journeyman carpenter, and he helped Ernie get a job as a laborer with a construction company. Before long Ernie became a journeyman as well. 8 Soon Ernie was working on a construction job at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Havre de Grace, Maryland. It was there that God brought across his path another carpenter, Elmer Albright. Ernie was warned by his fellow workers on the job to stay away from Elmer because Elmer seemed to have a “bug” about religion. Actually Ernie later remarked that Elmer never talked to him about religion. He did speak to him about the Lord Jesus Christ. After nearly a year of inviting Ernie to Sunday School, Ernie eventually thought it would be good for his son Donald, about four years old, to attend Sunday School to receive some instruction in the Bible. One of the hymns sung that first Sunday they attended church was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”. Ernie could not sing the hymn because the words were not true for him. Over the following weeks the thoughts expressed in the hymn continued to come to his re- membrance.