Here am I; send me (Isa. 6:8c; read 6:1–8).
Everyone here today feels much concern about the so-called young people’s problem. From the Bible learn to think of it all as an opportunity. Here in Isaiah look at a case. Deal with it as it concerns one young man, all in the present tense, giving the first place to God. Whenever a young man comes to our church, he should:
I. Behold His God. What else is our church for? Think of the setting for the worship of God: the sweet light of painted windows, the quiet music from the organ, and the hush of needy hearts. Also the opening words: the call to prayer—the song of adoration to God as holy—the invocation of his Presence.
II. Respond to God. With words humbly confess sins: sins of self and sins of the people, mayhap in a time of prosperity. As with the man chosen to become God’s prophet, the confession may chiefly concern the past use of the lips.
III. Get Right with God, purely through his grace. As with Isaiah, pardon, cleansing, and peace come only through the shedding of innocent blood. The coal that touched the lips came from the altar of burnt offering. The burning coal teaches that cleansing may come through pain when appointed and blessed of God.
IV. Volunteer for God, in life service. After a personal experience of redeeming grace, a young man now present ought to hear the inner call of God. And then, in view of the world’s dire need today, resolve to invest his life where it will bring most glory to his God, and most largely meet the needs of human beings, one by one.
Minister of the Lord, is this the way you plan for an hour of worship? In choosing the morning hymns, do you inwardly follow some such order? Whatever the pattern, whenever you make ready to lead in the public worship of God, bring every young hearer, and older one, too, face to face with God through Christ and his Cross. Then move the listener to accept him, here and now, as Saviour and King.
The Great Cosmic Turning Point
THE ONLY SAVIOUR—“How can man be saved from himself?” Can science help man save him from himself? Is this a scientific problem? How would you scientifically go about even beginning to tackle that problem? There is no way science can get at it. You can’t even begin to formulate it in a way tractable to any kind of scientific investigation.
Don’t think the threat to humanity isn’t just as big a threat to communist man as it is to free-world man. This is a threat to all humanity. The threat is to human civilization. Both the free world and the communist world would go under in nuclear war. The threat is to humanity, to the planet, not to any given nation or system or scheme of national government.
The threat lies solely within man. Apart from man there wouldn’t be any threat. There we face the great dilemma of our time.
Modern man cries out for a savior. A Saviour has been given and yet nobody will accept this. Man desperately seeks for some other kind of savior, for science, or sociology or psychology, for wise political statesmen, for wise negotiators, for a ban or some scheme or anything to save us.
They simply can’t believe the great astounding truth, the great central event in the whole history of this planet, the great cosmic turning point: that at a particular moment in this history, about 2,000 years ago, He became man, and lived to the full a human life among us—Him by Whom the whole Milky Way, by Whom the hundred-billion hydrogen bombs came into existence, by Whom all space and time and matter, by Whom all these vast energies were brought into being in the physical universe, Him by Whom all things were made, things visible and invisible, everything that is, and apart from Whom nothing that exists entered upon any kind of existence. Everything that is owes its existence to Him and He came to this little earth. God carries out a vast rescue operation on our behalf. Once one knows Him and knows the vast significance of this central act in history, one knows the saving power and grace of it, and the strength of it. There is the only Saviour man has ever been given. Our Saviour, the incarnate Son of God Himself came to us and died a horrible death for us men, for our salvation, and is risen and lives and ascended and is a central power. The living Lord, the living Christ is there. By Him all of these energies owe their existence. In Him is to be found the source of all being, of all matter, of all energy, of all power, and the source of our existence and life, and the Saviour for us, too, the Saviour to eternity. And this is the key.
Now I don’t expect modern man to receive it. He thinks it’s old, it’s passé, it’s irrelevant. But whatever modern man thinks about it, however universally it’s disclaimed, it remains the central truth of human history and of the history of the universe. This saying act of God on man’s behalf in Christ. And there isn’t any other power capable of saving man from himself, of liberating man from the threat to humanity which man alone poses.—DR. WILLIAM G. POLLARD, Executive Director of Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, in an address at Keuka College, Keuka Park, New York.
SCIENCE AND ATHEISM—Science and Religion, one of the top Soviet anti-religious organs, warned readers that many professional people in Russia are not only baptized Christians, but openly practice religion. It claimed that most of them were … in the ranks of the Baptists, which makes this denomination—from the point of view of atheistic propagandists—the “most dangerous” of any religious group in the U.S.S.R.
The publication did not give statistics on the percentage of believers with higher education.…
It published an article by N. Barykin, who drew particular attention to a physician in Kuibyshev … an “ardent Baptist” and very active in the local church. Barykin conceded that … “it is difficult to reproach him for any professional blunders,” but he asked, in indignant vein, “How is it possible to cure people in the daytime and go to church in the evening?”
He noted that any person who fails the philosophy examination is dismissed from the university or institute in which he is a student, and “that is why all people with higher education in the Soviet Union are supposed and expected to be atheists”.… He accused professors of being negligent about educating students in “a really atheistic way.”—Religious News Service from Moscow, May 3, 1962.
LATEST BULLETIN—Much has happened in this area of science [anthropology] since 1955.… In the book [The Epic of Man by the editors of Life Magazine and Lincoln Barnett], earliest recognized man (Zinjanthropus) is still given an antiquity of only 600,000 years (the new figure is 1,750,000 years), whereas the modern variety of man is said to go back nearly half that far (the evidence is very poor). Also, Neanderthal man, who lived until 45,000 years ago, is pictured as a bull-necked, bent-kneed creature, a concept certainly no longer held by many of the authorities.…—THOMAS DALE STEWART, Department of Anthropology, United States National Museum, in Science, February 9, 1962, issue.
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH—We are able to quote the following from an article by William Fuchs, “Über die Zahl der Menschen die Bisher Gelebt Haben” (Number of People Who Ever Lived on Earth Up to the Present Time), Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Staat S. Wissenschaft (Government Sciences Journal, Volume 117, No. 3, 1951). Fuchs reported that according to his calculations between 60.7 and 80.4 billion persons have been born since 1 Million B. C., and that these numbers represent between 20 and 35 times the total world population today. According to other estimates prepared by Wellemeyer and Lorimer, births have totaled 77 billion, and today’s population of approximately three billion is about 4.0 per cent of that number. The latter estimates appear in Population Bidletin, Volume XVIII, No. 1, February 1962, published by the Population Reference Bureau, Inc., 1507 M Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. A copy of the bulletin may be obtained for 50 cents from that organization. The Bureau of the Census has made no attempt to verify the numbers quoted above or to take any independent estimates.—Letter from the Chief of the Population Division, Bureau of the Census, United States Department of Commerce, in reply to an inquiry about the relative growth of world population.
