January 3 Today in OPC History

On the Lord's Day of January 3, 1937, John P. Galbraith, a senior at Westminster Theological Seminary, exhorted for the first time at Calvary Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Two days earlier while with his parents Galbraith learned that J. Gresham Machen had died in Bismarck, North Dakota. The next morning he drove to the seminary. The first person that he saw was professor R.B. Kuiper who had tears running down his face. Kuiper was so grief-stricken that he could barely speak. Galbraith realized that he needed to write a new sermon to preach at Calvary Church the next day. He prayed to the Lord and then chose as his text, Joshua 13:1, "there remains yet very much land to possess." Galbraith believed that despite the death of Machen, the church's unquestioned leader, that the cause that Machen stood for should go forward with confidence in the Lord.

On May 25, 1937, Galbraith would be ordained as a gospel minister in the Presbyterian Church of America (renamed Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1939). He would remain active in ministry in the church until he went to be with the Lord in 2016 at the age of 103.