36 Jesus answered,
“My kingdom is not from this world.”
Last week, we enjoyed a great time with a wonderful group of
kids at Vacation Bible School at Pleasant Grove UMC. Each
evening, we began with an assembly where we said the pledges of allegiance to
the American flag, the Christian flag, and the Bible. That got me thinking about the Christian flag
and where it came from. So I did a
little research and thought I would share what I found. The following excerpts are from Wikipedia.com.
The Christian Flag was first conceived on September 26, 1897, at Brighton Chapel on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York in the United States. The superintendent of a Sunday school, Charles C. Overton, gave an impromptu lecture to the gathered students, because the scheduled speaker had failed to arrive for the event. He gave a speech asking the students what a flag representing Christianity would look like. Overton thought about his improvised speech for many years afterward. In 1907, he and Ralph Diffendorfer, secretary of the Methodist Young People's Missionary Movement, designed and began promoting the flag.
Some churches practice a "pledge of allegiance" or "affirmation of loyalty" to the Christian Flag, which is similar to the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The first pledge was written by Lynn Harold Hough, a Methodist minister who had heard Ralph Diffendorfer, secretary to the Methodist Young People's Missionary Movement, promoting the Christian flag at a rally. He wrote the following pledge: “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands; one brotherhood, uniting all mankind in service and in love.”
Flags are used to rally our loyalty. To which “kingdom” are you most loyal? Is it your family? Is it your southern heritage? Is it the country in which you grew up? Is it your favorite college football
team? Is it the branch of the military
in which you served? All these earthly
“kingdoms” will one day cease. Perhaps
you should switch your allegiance to something eternal—to Jesus and his
Kingdom. Of course, I am no expert and
certainly don’t claim to know everything, but that’s the Truth as far as I can
tell…
God loves you and so do I!
