Magyar Egyház, 1964 (43. évfolyam, 3-9. szám)
1964-11-01 / 9. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 15 LOUIS NAGY: FORTY YEARS IN DEFENSE OF THE GOLDEN SHIELD In the letter to the Ephesians, which is called the queen of the Epistles, Paul gives this advice to the church which is facing martyrdom, and to all Christians, “above all, take the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Eph, 6:16). What is faith? It is answering God’s call. It is the happy knowledge that we have a merciful God to whom we can trust ourselves. Faith is trust. We know, through Christ, that God is our loving Heavenly Father without whose permissive will not even a hair can fall from our heads. Faith is obedience to God and a decision to follow Christ. He who has faith as his shield has the greatest protection against the fiery darts of life because he has a loving Father and Savior Lord who shed his blood for him and will never forsake. The most precious advice that can be given to any Christian is “Take the shield of faith.” Soldiers of the ancient world used the shields which afforded the best protection. The life of the Hungarian Christian is protected best by the shield of the Hungarian Reformed faith. This shield has been beaten throughout bloody centuries and was decorated with prayer, martyrdom, and death. This shield of faith confesses God as the sovereign Lord who has forordained our salvation and has outlined the course of our lives. The shield of faith which accepts the Holy Scriptures as the word of God as being testified to by the Holy Spirit as the directive principle of life to which we dedicate ourselves. Our ancestors and the prayerful Hungarian Reformed Christians always walked protected by this shield of faith. David, the shepherd king, bequeathed to his son a mighty kingdom. What a rich and illustrious empire was built on the heritage of the shepherd king! Solomon made Jerusalem the center of the world, to it all the gold and treasures of the earth flowed. Solomon had five hundred golden shields made for his guards to carry and to show his riches and glory as he went in and out of the temple. What will happen to all these riches, the gleaming gold and all the pomp in the third generation? Solomon’s son, Rehoboam turned away from God, and God also turned away from him. Shishak. the king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. Solomon had only been dead five years, and all his treasures were gone (1 Kings 14:28). Rehoboam gave up the golden shields without resistance and made, in their stead, brazen shields. These brazen shields were carried before the King, who had lost his heritage, into the temple. Everyone knew that these were false imitations. To give up golden shields for brazen ones is infidelity, cowardice, and deception. This world is always ready to offer us brass shields for gold ones, and man often gives up his shield of gold because he does not know the real meaning and mission of life. He gives up the eternal values for fleeting, temporal things—success, profit and selfishness. He gives up his ancestral heritage for cheap imitations. In our American-Hungarian life, the most important question is, what will happen to our golden shields in the hands of the third generation. Will they embezzle our precious heritage? God forbid! Our Davids brought a precious treasure from a world dear to them, which is fast disappearing in a fog of memories. They brought here the golden shield of their faith. They bequeathed a blessed heritage to the second generation who remove their churches from the slums into beautiful parts of the city. But what will happen, again we ask, to the golden shields in the hands of the third generation? Will they become Rehoboams? God forbid! I could quote statements in which the writers have wilfully or unwilfully acknowledged that the golden shield has become brazen in their hands. The light of this shield is false, and it is only good for covering the turbulent conscience which traded gold for brass. On December 9, 1964, it is forty years since five ministers and seven laymen, representing six churches, met together in Duquesne and vowed that the Golden Shield, the sacred Hungarian faith, would never change to brass and would be defended even at the price of their lives. In the faith of the American-Hungarian Reformed people, next to the establishing of the Hungarian Reformed Federation, the greatest miracle is that in America there is an organized, independent, free, autonomous, self-supporting and self-governing Hungarian Reformed Denomination. In defense of the golden shield, forty years have passed. To the ministers who held high the banners of the Hungarian Reformed Faith, thirty seven other ministers have joined. Many have gone to their heavenly reward. From the six churches in the beginning, twenty-nine churches have arisen. From this independent movement which was not reported of in Hungarian newspapers either here or in Hungary, has come a church which is recognized today by Protestants all over the world. Among the Religious Bodies of the U.S.A., we are the only Hungarian Reformed Church registered. Our history of these past forty years reads like the history of the wanderings in the desert. We often walked by the bitter waters of Marah and our lips were parched with thirst. Often we wer rebellious and doubting. We tore and were torn apart. We received most of our wounds from our brethren, and certainly we did not let God avenge our cause. When we became still before God, we could always hear His still, smal voice. When, at night, we looked to heaven, we could discern the fiery pillar showing the way; and by day, the pillar of cloud of hope ascended upward. The road we have travelled for forty years has been a most happy and blessed one. Any man, though he might have walked only a small part of this road, felt himself chosen, called, and richly rewarded. In defense of the golden shield we were kept, and at the same time, we kept our brethren from being swallowed up because we were faithful. If there had not been a Free Hungarian Reformed Church in America, I am sure there would never have been a Hungarian Synod within the United Church of Christ. How pitiful that they embarassed away the word “Hungarian” from the name of their synod. Even a brief history of the past forty years would be most interesting. Because of the limitations of our church paper at this time, we cannot do it; but we will
