Satisfactions of a Life in God’s Word

When one has passed the age of sixty, aware that more than two-thirds of his life has gone by, and that probably not more than ten or twelve years remain for work at any task worth mentioning (and when, of these years, twoscore have been spent in one profession) he is compelled to ask himself two questions. If the answers do not satisfy him, the questions may torment him the remainder of his life.

The first is this: If I had my life to live over again, and had any choice in the matter, would I devote myself to the same work that has engaged my time and strength these forty years? And the second: How shall I most satisfyingly occupy myself in the years that remain, should God grant this further period of time? This question in turn poses a supplementary one: Is the work in which one has labored all these years (if I may now use the third person rather than the first) of such a character that life’s greatest joys will be found in continuing in these same tasks; or is one convinced that he has more or less exhausted what his chosen field of labor offers, and that new joys will be found only in the exploration of some other area of knowledge or activity?

Unless in this article I purpose to face such questions impersonally, and thus merely spin out a few pious platitudes, it is necessary to be somewhat autobiographical—a line I have not normally pursued in my writings. In the fall of 1918, I began my first pastorate, among the beloved, hospitable folk of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, at Ocean City, and there realized that the great passion of my life was the study, preaching and teaching of the Word of God. In all the years that have followed, there have been other secondary interests in life, but I believe there has never been a rival passion with me.

The gifts and inclinations which God gives one man in the Christian ministry are not, I am fully aware, necessarily those which he bestows upon another, but of this I am sure today: God has so ordered the duties and obligations of my life that it has not been necessary for me to forsake at any period of time this first love, the study and exposition of the Holy Scriptures. I have no administrative gifts, and it has never been necessary for me to spend two or three years, as pastor of a church, wrestling with the financial problems involved in the erection of an ecclesiastical structure, and arguing day and night with contractors, stone masons and plumbers—all of which I realize someone must do. I have no talents for playing musical instruments, for painting or for singing. I would be utterly bored in spending afternoons making imitation antique furniture, and friends who have asked me to play golf have never extended a second invitation after one afternoon on the links, for reasons that need not be mentioned. This does not mean that I do not enjoy music, or art, or a football game, but I have no gifts in these directions. Nor should this be interpreted as meaning that I live the life of a hermit, for no man could possibly enjoy more than I the rich fellowship of Christian friends.

The Torment Of Regret

It is now time to consider the two questions we have posed. All will readily admit that nothing could be sadder in the life of a Christian minister, apart from gross malfeasance, after having given the best years of his life to the ministry, than coming to the conclusion that he should have been engaged in some other major work during those years. It is then too late. Never will I forget that afternoon, twenty years ago, when I visited for the last time a beloved friend in Newcastle Presbytery, the most brilliantly educated minister on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with a Ph.D degree from Harvard under Munsterberg and William James, a man of wholesome Christian character and a diligent scholar (though perhaps he had never preached to more than two hundred people at one time in his life). Pointing to a bookcase holding some of the major tomes of philosophy he had once mastered—Hamilton, Berkeley, and others—and placing the other hand on the Bible, he said regretfully, in the rapid manner in which he always spoke, “Smith, I wish I had given less time to these philosophers and more time to this Book in which we read, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ ” My own personal conviction is that the man who spends his life, believingly, in the study and interpretation of the Word of God will never be tormented by such regrets as these.

Inexhaustible Themes

It is hard to conceive how anyone who makes the study and interpretation of the Scriptures the pre-eminent labor of his life could possibly be tempted to believe that some other area of study and work would bring deeper satisfaction. For the loftiest themes that can ever occupy the minds of men are set before us in the Word of God, with fullness and certainty, as in no other literature of the world. The student of the Scriptures is continually confronted with such vast subjects as the creation of the universe, the divine purpose of history, the origin, nature and destiny of man, Messianic prophecy, a divinely-given legislation for every major area of life, the Incarnation, character, work, teachings, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the organization and activity of the Church, the profound factors of salvation, the consummation of the age, and the meaning and certainty of eternal life. No one man, or even the whole Church, has exhausted such themes as these, and it is in understanding these subjects that the heart of man comes to rest and the mind is delivered from darkness, doubt, and despair.

The faithful student of the Scriptures will find increasingly true the words of Augustine, written to his son in A.D. 412, “Such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else from early boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and talents greater than I have, I would still daily be making progress in discovering their treasures; not that there is so great difficulty in thumbing through them to know the things necessary to salvation, but when anyone has accepted these truths with the faith that is indispensable as the foundation of a life of piety and uprightness, so many things which are veiled under manifold shadows of mystery remain to be inquired into by those who are advancing in the study, and so great is the depth of wisdom not only in the words in which these have been expressed but also in the things themselves, that the experience of the oldest, the ablest, and the most zealous students of Scripture illustrates what Scripture itself has said.…”

The statement of David in “the Psalm of the Word of God,” “I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil” (119:162), can be echoed in the experience of anyone who faithfully labors in the Holy Scriptures. His is a life of constant exploration and discovery. He has the opportunity, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, of discovering in the Scriptures not only those truths which many other Christian students have previously seen, from century to century, but things which perhaps no one else has noted. One would think, for example, that the subject of the birth of Christ, with all the hundreds of volumes that have been written around it, would have been exhausted long ago, but actually no one has as yet presented to the Christian Church a volume which completely covers all the various aspects of this epochal theme. The number of treatises on the subject of the Virgin Birth is ample, but there are scores of other topics embraced in this single event—witness Hastings’ Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, which includes 71 articles relating exclusively to the birth of Christ! Who would want to leave the study of the Word of God at any time of life, and give his prime strength to the exploration of any other themes, when such divine subjects are before him, inviting to years of exciting research and discovery?

Scope For Investigation

We have had a number of books on Christ’s prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem, and we are now witnessing the publication of considerable literature, long overdue, on our Lord’s Olivet Discourse, but no volume known to me has attempted to examine all the prophecies of the Lord Jesus. A number of scholars have given us the results of their study of the influence of the Book of Genesis in the New Testament, but who has done something on the influence of Exodus and Deuteronomy in the New Testament, or of Genesis in the remaining books of the Old Testament?

There has never been a time in my own ministry when I have not had before me lists of subjects or passages in the Bible that I hope soon to investigate. What does Isaiah mean, e.g., when he says that God has “declared the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done” (46:10)? What is meant by “the deep things of God” in Daniel 2:22 and 1 Corinthians 2:10? I long for time, extended periods of time, in which to study carefully the deeper meanings of the oft-recurring phrase, “the Word”; to examine exhaustively the work of the Spirit in revealing “the things of Christ”; and to know thoroughly every aspect of the message of the Book of Revelation. Also, for some time I have wanted to give extended study to the doctrine of good in this divine volume. Here is a word that occurs more than 800 times from the second chapter of Genesis to the Third Epistle of John, many of the passages being of great doctrinal and ethical importance.

I do not have space in this autobiographical fragment to speak with fullness of one of the never-failing joy that comes to one who immerses himself in the oracles of God, namely, the privilege of living with the greatest society of authors that has ever gathered around one literary masterpiece, that glorious company of expounders of the Word of God, and theologians of the Church, from the days of the Apostles to this very hour. What wonderful works are those to which the study of the Scriptures so often leads us: the writings of Augustine and the Venerable Bede, Dante and Wycliffe, the monumental works of Luther, Knox and Calvin, the quickening pages of Hooker, the cleansing lines of Lancelot Andrewes, the inspiring poems of Milton, the unexhausted treasures of Richard Baxter and John Owen, the sermons of Flavel, Thomas Chalmers, South, Guthrie, Liddon, Parker and Alexander Whyte, the theological works of Jonathan Edwards, Tholuck, Robert Candlish, Charles Hodge and Robert Flint, not to mention the thousands of books that have been written on the life and work of Christ, and that vast library of the more important biblical commentaries. What field of study and research in this whole world can draw an earnest student away from the ever-fascinating, compelling, transforming pages of the Word of God?

The Book And Our World

One born near the beginning of this twentieth century—a century which has seen the advent of radio, television, the airplane, of atom and hydrogen bombs, the rise and fall of three evil dictatorships, the fanatical devotion of more than a third of the world’s population to materialistic and atheistic communism—who has made the study of the Scriptures the major concern of his life, now finds himself in a period of more worldwide interest in the Word of God than has been known probably since the days of the Apostles. The recovery of interest in the whole field of biblical theology, the archaeological explorations in the Near East, the excitement created by the unexpected discoveries at Qumran, Jericho and Byblos, the phenomenal sale of the Revised Standard Version, the work of Wycliffe and other agencies in Bible translation—all have brought the Bible again to the front pages of our newspapers.

The establishment of Israel itself, and the effort to reintroduce the Levitical code as it pertains to land, food, the Sabbath, etc., has compelled the citizens of that state to re-examine the Word of God. Congresses are now being held frequently in cities in Palestine, attended by hundreds of scholars from all over the world. The fruitful evangelistic labors of Dr. Billy Graham, whose messages are so constantly interspersed with the phrase, “the Bible says,” have caused multitudes to recognize anew the power and meaning of the Word of God. Courses in subjects directly related to English Bible are more numerous and assigned more importance in the curricula of theological seminaries these last few years than at any time in this century. Economists and statesmen have gone back to the final book of the New Testament to find the right word to describe this terrible hour in which we live—so frequently designated, particularly since Hiroshima, “this apocalyptic age.” So manifold and vast are the areas of Biblical investigation today that even the most serious scholar finds it difficult to keep abreast of the important literature appearing year by year in his own circumscribed field of biblical knowledge.

Crumbling Modern Altars

How comparatively inconsequential are the other so-called great classics of literature, even those of our modern age. When I was in college, in the realm of literature we worshiped at the shrines of four of the outstanding writers of the last half-century, and some of the professors almost trembled with excitement and adoration as they opened books by these men. There was the playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), the greatest of modern German dramatists and poets, Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946), the French essayist and novelist, Romain Rolland (1866–1944), and the English poet, Alfred Noyes (1888–). What message for today has the man who in the second decade of this century dedicated his life to the study of any one of these writers? How many students in our universities today are gathered around their voluminous writings? How often do we hear lines quoted from their once-stirring pages? I still love the poetry of Alfred Noyes, but how irrelevant are his words today—“It is lilac time in London”—in view of the frightful bombings that London knew, and may know again (may God forbid)? What contribution did Goethe make to Germany when that nation came under the demon power of Adolf Hitler? The strength for German faithfulness to high principles came in those days from the inexhaustible wells of the Word of God. The man who comes from his study with that one Book in his hand, in his heart, and on his lips, has the only message that can bring comfort and hope and deliverance in this mid-twentieth-century hour. This alone fills his heart with joy, and he thanks God for that divine guidance that has peritted him to spend his days in searching the oracles of God.

Spirit Of Expectancy

A look into the future must conclude this brief and inadequate testimony. It may seem almost fantastic, and I would not have believed it possible if someone had predicted this ten years ago, but the truth is that today I personally have a greater spirit of expectancy regarding the tasks I want to undertake in Bible study in the years that remain than I have known in any preceding years.

It is in the habitual, lifelong study of the Word of Truth that we begin to enter into the experience of the Psalmist, an experience of which the world knows nothing, “In thy presence is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11). The Word Incarnate is revealed to us in the Word Written, and the more we know of this written Word, the richer and deeper is our knowledge of Christ; and the more we know of him, the more we love him; and the more we love him and keep his commandments, the more do we come into a revelation of his great love for us. Is not the persistent study of, and obedience to the Word of God the key to the words of our Lord recorded in John’s Gospel (15:7–11): “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disciples. Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved you: abide ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”

The name of Wilbur M. Smith has been synonymous for a generation with the study of the English Bible. Born in Chicago on June 9, 1894, he ministered in Presbyterian pulpits in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania before teaching at Moody Bible Institute (1938–47) and then at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has served the last ten years as Professor of English Bible. He is Editor of Peloubet’s Select Notes on the International Sunday School Lessons, and is currently featured in a Sunday night television series (Los Angeles, Channel 13) on the fulfillment of biblical prophecies. An indefatigible writer, he is author of over a dozen books.

- More from Wilbur M. Smith

Cover Story

The Last Days of Babylon

Donald J. Wiseman

What we know about Babylonia is mostly derived from clay tablets. Tens of thousands of these cuneiform texts have been found in the last century and for some periods these tell us a great deal about the inhabitants of the lower Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, about their religion, customs and business affairs. But as yet comparatively few of these texts are historical in the more direct sense of the term.

By a curious coincidence a number of texts that are historical have come to light in recent months, all relating to a comparatively short period of some seventy years—from about 609 to 539 B.C. Between these dates, as it happens, lies the last period of Babylonian greatness. In 612 Nineveh, the ancient capital of Assyria, was taken by the Medes and Babylonians and the latter inherited the former Assyrian empire; Babylon now ruled all Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and, for a brief while, perhaps part of Egypt itself; Jerusalem fell and the Jews were carried off to exile. At the end of these 70 years, in 539, Babylon fell in her turn. She was taken by the Persians under Cyrus.

Although many of these happenings are known from the Bible or from classical writers such as Josephus and Herodotus, we have had few contemporary Babylonian records. Take the Battle of Carchemish, early or in our period; it was at Carchemish that Babylon won Syria and Palestine from Egypt, and its sequel was the capture of Jerusalem nine years later. Until now great events such as these have been known only from the Old Testament and Josephus (who often derived his history from the Old Testament) and their dates and many details have been lacking. The history of Egypt at this time is almost a blank and the doings of even major Babylonian kings like Nebuchadnezzar have had to be reconstructed from a few building inscriptions supplemented by later classical allusions. Scarcely anything is known of the Medes, the northeastern neighbors of the Babylonians, as they pushed their frontier north and westwards to the Halys River. The clash between the two great powers in Asia Minor—the Medes and Lydians—remains a history to be read only in Greek literature. It was of obvious importance that we should find contemporary documents to explain the relationship of the Babylonians with these peoples.

The Babylonian Chronicle

At last, in 1923, two clay tablets were found of the class commonly known as the Babylonian Chronicle. They described the combined Medo-Babylonian sack of Nineveh at the beginning of the period in 612; they described the Medo-Persian advance on Babylon in 539 at the end. But for the next 30 years no further texts of this kind turned up. Then last year I completed the translation of four small inscribed clay tablets found in the Babylonian Collection of the British Museum. They were among a lot of ordinary contract tablets, looked exactly like them, and had been there for over 50 years. It now turned out that they were part of the same unique, reliable and contemporary Babylonian Chronicle, written in Babylon itself. One text tells how Babylon struggled to free itself from the Assyrian yoke, inspired by the leadership of Nabopolassar who was later elected king. Then in 605, it says, the aged and sick Nabopolassar handed over the army to his eldest son and crown prince, the vigorous Nebuchadnezzar. The very same year Nebuchadnezzar won the battle of Carchemish and turned three years of defeat by the Egyptian forces into a glorious victory. He marched boldly up the Euphrates bank to the Egyptian stronghold; then, says the Chronicle:

He crossed the river to go against the Egyptian army which lay in Carchemish. The armies fought with each other and the Egyptian army withdrew before him. He accomplished their defeat and beat them to non-existence. As for the rest of the Egyptian army which had escaped from the defeat so quickly that no weapon had reached them, the Babylonians overtook and defeated them in the district of Hamath so that not a single man escaped to his own country. At that time Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole of Hatti-land.

The Book Of Kings

Hatti-land was the name for Syria and Palestine; the biblical Book of Kings puts these same events this way:

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. And the king of Egypt came not any more out of his land; for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.

The new Chronicle even gives the precise date of Nabopolassar’s death, the 8th of Ab, that is the 16th August, 605 B.C. and the date, three weeks later, when Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in Babylon. It was the very day he entered the capital after his victory, having ridden in from Palestine. This confirms what we already know from another source: from Berossus, who was a priest of Bel in Babylon, in the third century B.C.; fragments of Berossus’ history are incorporated in Josephus. Berossus tells how Nebuchadnezzar, hearing of his father’s death, “set affairs in Palestine in order and committed the prisoners he had taken to some of his friends while he went in haste, having but few with him over the desert to Babylonia.” It can be estimated now that the young crown prince made the arduous five-hundred-mile journey in about ten days. The chronicle goes on to give details of the Babylonian operations in Palestine during the first years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. He now received the submission of all the kings of Syria and her neighbors, including Jehoiakim of Judah who was to be his vassal for the next three years. Ashkelon was sacked. Fragments of a letter, written on papyrus, show that the city urgently appealed for help from Egypt but in vain. I think that all these successful operations were part of a carefully conceived plan. Nebuchadnezzar must have realized that, like many of his predecessors, he would have to consolidate his hold over the many city-states of Syria and Palestine before carrying the war across the Sinai desert into Egypt itself. He knew too that this step would have to be taken quickly if he were to free his armies for the defense of their own homeland from any possible invasion from the opposite direction—from the east. For in the Persian hills the first moves to unite the tribes were already taking place. The Medo-Persian confederation was no sudden achievement. It is not surprising then to learn from the new Chronicle that four years later, in 601, Nebuchadnezzar marched right through Palestine and fought a fierce battle with Egypt. There had hitherto been no hint of this from Egyptian, Babylonian or biblical sources, nor was it known that Egypt was so strong a military power at this time.

Defeat For Nebuchadnezzar

The communique giving the Babylonian version of this battle says rather vaguely that the Babylonian and Egyptian armies “clashed in open battle and inflicted heavy losses on each other”; it is obvious though that it was really a defeat for Nebuchadnezzar, for he had to spend the next 18 months re-equipping his army. This revival of Egyptian prestige may explain why Jehoiakim of Judah now ceased to pay tribute to his Babylonian overlord despite repeated warnings of the prophet Jeremiah. The inevitable punishment followed: three years later Nebuchadnezzar set out for Palestine, having previously safeguarded his line of march by punitive raids on the Arab tribes of Kedar and Hazor, south of Damascus. The siege and capture of Jerusalem, well known from the Bible, is graphically reported in the Chronicle:

In the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, the month of Kislev, the king of Babylon mustered his army, marched to the Hatti-land and besieged the city of Judah. On the second day of the month Adar he captured the city and seized the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice, received its heavy tribute and sent it to Babylon.

An Extra-Biblical Account

So for the first time we have an extra-biblical account of this historic event which began the period of the Jewish exile in Babylon. Jerusalem fell on the second of Adar, that is the 16th March 597 B.C., and so we now have a fixed point in both biblical and Babylonian history. Jehoiachin’s captivity in Babylon, by the way, is also confirmed by ration tablets which were found at Babylon in 1917 but were not published until 1949. These tablets name the king, his family and some fellow-Judeans, and list the amounts of oil and barley issued to them by prison officials. The Jewish king chosen by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed him was Zedekiah, whose rebellion eleven years later was to result in the desolation of Judah, the destruction of Jerusalem and further large-scale deportations. But of this the new Chronicle tells us nothing; the text breaks off after describing the suppression of an army revolt in Babylon in Nebuchadnezzar’s eleventh year—that is, in 595. Except for one interesting tablet the Chronicle is only resumed in 556 for the reign of Nabu-na’id, better known perhaps as the classical Nabonidus, the last native king of Babylon.

Discovering A Clue

While I was working on these small documents, another piece of the jigsaw puzzle was found to fit into the growing picture of this period. Last autumn Dr. Rice of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London uncovered three unusually large paving stones in the floor of the Great Mosque of Harran in Southern Turkey, the city where once the patriarch Abraham had stayed before moving on from Ur to the promised land. These stone blocks proved to be inscribed in Babylonian and are now being read by Professor Gadd, to whom I owe much of the information concerning this most recent and important discovery.

The three Harran texts all tell of events in the reign of the same Nabonidus. One of the newly found inscriptions purports to be the autobiography of the Lady Adad-Guppi, the mother of Nabonidus. This remarkable old lady enumerates her pious deeds done at Harran to the gods Sin, Nergal, Nusku and Sadarnunna; it seems she gave great gifts to these gods in return for the benefits bestowed on her during her many years of service. She names the eight kings of Assyria and Babylonia in whose reigns she acted as the high-priestess of the moon-god at Harran.

The other two monuments found at Harran are a more direct continuation of the events I have described. They are duplicates. They show the king himself holding a distinctive notched staff and above him the emblems of the moon-god Sin and other deities. A third copy of the same stele, by the way, has long been in the British Museum but so mutilated that it could not be read. In contrast to his mother’s account of her life Nabonidus describes his own affairs in an unconventional manner with an appearance, at least, of much candor and modesty.

I am Nabu-na’id who has not the distinction of being somebody, and kingship is not within me, but the gods and goddesses begged for me and the god Sin raised me to the king-ship. In the depths of the night the moon-god caused me to behold a dream saying, “Rebuild Ehulhul, the temple of the god Sin, which is in the city Harran, immediately. All the lands are entrusted into thy hands.”

This introduction was no doubt intended to explain several things—how Nabonidus reached the throne (he was an irregular successor, what the Assyrians earlier called “the son of a nobody”), and why he was so devoted to this remote and distant sanctuary. His fanatical obsession with Sin’s temple and worship was perhaps inherited from his old mother; it certainly led to his concentrating all his resources there for the first two years of his reign.

From Nabu-na’id we now learn for the first time of an unexpected turn of events.

But the people, sons of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, Erech and Larsa, both priests and people of the chief cities of Babylonia sinned against his great god-head. They created disturbance, they acted evilly, they paid no heed to the command of the king of the gods, Sin. They forgot their duty, they talked rebellion, falsehood and disloyalty. Like dogs they devoured one another. Thus they caused plague and famine to be in the midst of them, and it diminished the people.

Nabonidus then did a strange thing, he says.

I went far away on the road to the towns of Tema, Dadanu, Padakku, Hibra, Iadihu, as far as Iatribu; for ten years I went about among these and entered not into my city of Babylon.

Light On Nabonidus’ Exile

The exile of Nabonidus to Tema in Southern Arabia has long been an event as celebrated as obscure and here at last is new light on it. He left the administration to his son Belshazzar—the same Belshazzar whose fate we know from the Old Testament Book of Daniel.

During his ten-year voluntary exile Nabonidus seems to have occupied Tema by force and settled there, building himself a palace in the Babylonian style. His new kingdom, if such it was, lay in the Arabian desert some 500 miles south of Babylon. It covered a wide area, for Dadanu is obviously the biblical Dedan named by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel as the neighbor of Tema and as a center trading in cloth with Tyre.

Now the most controversial and enigmatic aspects of the exile of Nabonidus are his motives for it. The new text seems to imply that he left because plague and famine were rife in Babylonia; we do in fact possess numerous Babylonian contracts which allude to the famine itself and show how sharply the prices of staple commodities rose as a result. Yet one suspects that plague can scarcely be the main reason for so long an absence. Perhaps the Babylonians thought that the plague itself was due to the king’s religious heresy. One feels that at any rate the priests at Babylon must have thought his exile to be a just retribution for substituting Sin, the moon-god, for their local Bel-Marduk, as head of the pantheon.

Now by a singular coincidence another account of the same event has come to light within the last few months. This is a fragment of an Aramaic scroll found at Qumran in Jordan, which forms part of the “Dead Sea Scrolls.” This fragment probably dates from the first century B.C.; that makes it about four centuries later than the events recorded by Nabonidus himself. It tells how “Nabu-na’i,” here called king of Assyria and Babylonia, was smitten with a severe disease by the Most High God. At length God sent him a message from one of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia. This man told the king that the protracted sickness was a divine punishment because he had transgressed by praying to gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, of wood, stone and clay. The king thereupon repented and was healed. Then, as a result of a dream, he returned to Babylon where he proceeded to establish the worship of the one true God. His reign ended in peace and prosperity. Obviously, to the monotheistic Jews the moon-god Sin could never replace Yahweh as the Most High God.

Remarkable Agreement

There is a remarkable agreement between this Aramaic second century document and the Book of Daniel—so different in origin and inspiration. In Daniel you have an almost identical story told not about Nabu-na’id but about Nebuchadnezzar; how he was afflicted for seven years, repented and was restored to his kingdom. The similarities cannot be explained by mere literary borrowing, for, as we shall see, the story also reflects historical facts concerning the end of Nabonidus’ exile. Incidentally, Herodotus himself refers to both Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus by one name—Labynetus.

If the reason for the king’s exile was not primarily the desire to avoid the plague or ostracism on religious grounds, Professor Sidney Smith may be right in his view that by going to Tema, Nabonidus sought to restore the dwindling fortunes of his country; his plan would have been to gain control of the rich trade routes passing through Arabia to Egypt and to the north. We know that during his absence he kept contact with his capital by camel caravan. But even if this move was prompted by economic necessity it does look to me as if the main reason for Nabonidus’ absence was personal pique toward opposition to his pet project at Harran, and, perhaps, to the religious innovations which accompanied it. For on the stele Nabonidus tells us that at the end of ten years he found his subjects in a better frame of mind, being now willing to do the gods’ will.

They rejoiced in abundance and the kings of Egypt, of the Medes and of the Arabs, who had been hostile, sent messengers to me to make an alliance involving peace and friendly relations. The gods made the peoples of Babylonia and Syria to be united with me in word and heart … they kept watch and fulfilled my commands in the remoteness of distant mountains and in the remote paths I travelled.

The Identity Of Darius

Nabonidus had won his own way, but not for long. “The king of the Medes” in the tenth year of Nabonidus’ reign can be no other than Cyrus the Persian, for he had incorporated the province of Media in what became the greater realm of Persia. We know that at the end of our seventy-year period—in 539—Cyrus captured Babylon; both Nabonidus and Belshazzar died soon after the fall of the city and the Babylonian empire passed under the sway of the Achaemenid rulers. It now seems that in Babylonia Cyrus used the title “King of the Medes” in addition to the more usual “King of Persia, King of Babylonia, King of the lands.” On the other hand, according to the Book of Daniel, the conqueror of Babylon was an elderly Median named Darius who succeeded Belshazzar. The biblical text, if you remember, says: “So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.” There is no place in Babylonian or Persian history for any such predecessor of Cyrus, and attempts to identify this “Darius” have been a source of controversy for years. In fact, the majority of scholars doubt his historicity. But this new text reopens the whole question. Is it too bold an hypothesis to suggest that the “King of the Medes” of our Babylonian text may yet prove to be the “Darius the Mede” of Daniel’s day? Cyrus, at the age of 62, might well have taken another name as king of the Medes and even have been the son of an Ahasuerus, as was the biblical “Darius,” so obscure is his ancestry. The biblical reference can as easily be translated “Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, even in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.”

Donald J. Wiseman, O.B.E., M.A., is head of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities of The British Museum. This article abridges a recent BBC broadcast talk given on “Nebuchadnezzar and The Last Days of Babylon.”

- More from Donald J. Wiseman

Cover Story

Why Revise the Scriptures?

Eugene A. Nida

“But why should I get a new Bible, when the words of my Bible speak so sweetly to my heart?” an elderly lady said, as it was suggested to her that perhaps she would like to obtain one of the more modern translations. On the other hand, another person, who had recently purchased a modern-language translation of the New Testament, declared, “Why, in the few months since I’ve had this new version, I’ve read the Bible more than for ten years. Now, it makes sense.”

These two responses are typical of the differences which have always existed between the old and the new—the continuing conflict between loyalty to the past and concern for the present and the future. It would be quite wrong to imagine that these diverse attitudes concerning different translations of the Bible came into being only after the recent publication of the Revised Standard Version. The accompanying publicity, both pro and con, no doubt threw the spotlight upon certain underlying tensions between “traditionalists” and “contemporaries” (if we may apply such names), but conflicts over new and old translations of the Scriptures in English preceded even the King James Version. In fact, the strong adherents to the Geneva Version, published approximately fifty years before the King James, first opposed the Bishops Bible, published some ten years after their Geneva Version, but when the King James Version appeared, they spared no words of bitter criticism in denouncing the scholars whom they contended had distorted the Word of God.

500 English “Translations”

Between the time of the King James Version, published first in 1611, and the present time, those opposing new English translations and revisions have had plenty of opportunity to denounce the work of persons attempting to put the Scriptures in a more intelligible form, for since 1611 a total of more than 500 translations of the Scriptures have been published in English. These have consisted of twenty-seven full Bibles, over seventy-five New Testaments, more than 150 publications of less than a New Testament, but not printed as parts of commentaries, and the rest, often consisting of major portions of the Bible, printed as new translations to accompany expositions of the meaning of the Scriptures. Even during the last fifty years there has been an amazing increase in revisions of the Scriptures into English, so that scarcely a year passes without some new revision of the Bible or New Testament coming off the press.

This almost unbelievable interest among English-speaking people in new translations of the Scriptures (their interest is manifest by the fact that most of these translations have proven to be profitable publishing ventures), is, however, not an isolated phenomenon. There is scarcely a major language in the world in which Scripture revision is not now going on. These include not only such major European languages as German, French, Norwegian, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Greek, Spanish, and Dutch, but almost all the important so-called “missionary languages” of the younger churches throughout the world, e.g. Chinese, Tagalog, Cebuano, Indonesian, Thai, Nepali, Tibetan, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Zulu, Swahili, Chiluba, Hausa, Bulu, and Cuzco Quechua. In fact, there are major revisions now going on in more than 90 languages in the world, and further translating in another 175 languages, with other translators at work to produce the Scriptures in at least 200 languages which have never had anything of the Word of God.

In the light of so many revisions being made throughout the world, one is inevitably led to ask two kinds of questions: (1) Do all of these revisions tend to meet with the same types of opposition from those who insist, whether rightly or wrongly, that the old is better? and (2) What are the reasons for so many revisions, especially at this time? Is this the result of liberal theology, especially in the mission field? Or is this possibly a genuine “return to the Bible”?

In reply to those who may question the widespread nature of opposition to revision, one can only say that in greater or lesser degree it has always been present. Even the King James Revisers had to deal with the same kinds of complaints, as their Introduction to the Reader (unfortunately omitted from practically all modern editions) so ably testifies, for their work had already encountered strong opposition and they knew it would meet with ungrateful bitterness. Accordingly, they wrote in the Preface:

Zeale to promote the common good whether it be by devising any thing our selves, or revising that which hath bene laboured by others, deserueth certainly much respect and esteeme, but yet findeth but cold intertainment in the world.…

For he that medleth with mens Religion in any part medleth with their custome … and though they finde no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to heare of altering …

Many mens mouths have bene open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand, or rather perusals of Translations made before: and aske what may be the reason, what the necessitie of the employment: Hath the Church bene deceived, say they, all this while?… Was their Translation good before? Why doe they now mend it? Was it not good? Why then was it obtruded to the people?…

It is quite understandable that those who have been led to a personal acceptance of Jesus Christ through a message communicated to them in a particular version should feel that such a translation was not only fully adequate for themselves but equally valid for everyone else. Moreover, those who by long habit or because of vested interests become attached to a particular form of the Scriptures are very unlikely to give up the old without a struggle. It should not be surprising, therefore, that revisions of the Bible have in general been condemned from the time of Wycliffe and Tyndale right down to the present.

Reasons For Revision

Certainly there must be some important reasons for the fact that at present there are more revisions and new translations in process throughout the world than at any other time in the history of the Christian Church. One cannot, however, point to any one reason as being either the exclusive or the principal factor in any one revision. Persons who have felt led to undertake such tasks have usually been induced to do so by a number of reasons, including (1) the existence of more accurate textual evidence, (2) important new information as to the meanings of biblical terms, (3) significant improvements in the interpretation of passages, (4) the inevitable changes which occur constantly in any living language and (5) a re-emphasis upon the principle of intelligibility as the valid basis for legitimate translating.

Better Textual Evidence

In John 1:18 the King James Version and all traditional translations read, “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.” However, some of the important manuscripts discovered during the past century have what was regarded by many as a strange reading, for instead of “only begotten Son” these manuscripts read “only begotten God”—such an unmistakable declaration of the deity of our Lord that certain persons insisted that this must have been a change introduced by some overzealous scribe. But in the recently published Bodmer II papyrus, which dates from the second century A.D., the reading of “only begotten God” is unmistakably confirmed. It would be impossible, of course, to declare unequivocally that “only begotten God” was the reading of the autograph of John’s Gospel, but it is most important that this significant variant be incorporated into modern translations, whether in the text itself or in the margin, for a translation which fails to provide its readers with this important new light is robbing them of some of the most important evidence from the best manuscripts.

There are some instances in which textual differences seem only very slight, but may be highly meaningful. For example, in the traditional rendering of John 7:52 there has always been a problem for exegetes, for it would appear as though the Greek meant, “No prophet ever comes out of Galilee,” which, of course, was not true of Jewish history. To help to remedy this situation Owen suggested some years ago that the text should be amended at this point and that a single article should be added, so that the passage would read, “The prophet (meaning, of course, the Messiah) will not come out of Galilee.” Imagine the keen interest of scholars who in going through the Bodmer II papyrus discovered that in this earliest extant text of John the article, suggested by Owen, is present. Undoubtedly, this passage in John 7:52, instead of being a rather oblique reference to the Messiah, is a direct one, and completely in keeping with the obvious intent of the Gospel account.

In addition to these two minor details, coming from the most recently available textual evidence, there are of course numerous other instances in which better biblical manuscripts have immeasurably improved the sense of passages. For example, in 1 John 5:18 we are no longer constrained to believe that “he that is begotten of God keepeth himself” (speaking of the effort of the redeemed to keep themselves from sin). Because of the absence of a single letter in the better Greek manuscripts, this passage should be translated, “He who was begotten by God keeps him” (indicating clearly that it is Christ Himself who keeps those who trust in Him). Rather than being fearful of the results of textual research, we who place our confidence in the inspiration of the writers of the Scriptures, rather than in the inerrancy of scribes, can be not only intellectually thankful for such greater accuracy but spiritually blessed by the more meaningful message.

It might seem anachronistic to speak of new meanings for words of the Bible, when obviously these words only had meanings in a society of at least 2,000 years ago. Nevertheless, during the last century an immense amount of study and research has gone into the careful examination and evaluation of masses of information coming from the Bible lands. The most important sources of our information are to be found in the tens of thousands of papyri fragments and scrolls, including everything from grocery lists to funeral orations. These scraps of paper have contained many examples of the words also found in the Bible, and thus have provided clues to meanings which were unknown to early translators of the Scriptures into English. For example, the Greek adverb ataktos (and the related derived verb) translated in the King James Version as “disorderly” in 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 7, and 11 really refers to people who “live in idleness.” The meaning of idleness fits the context immeasurably better than “walking disorderly,” for it is in this passage that Paul insists that if one does not work he should not eat. Furthermore, Paul calls attention to his own practice of working for a living with his own hands, as an example of one who was “not idle” (verse 7).

Another term which in the papyri suggests the possibility of a significant difference in meaning is the Greek word hypostasis, rendered as “substance” in most translations of Hebrews 11:1. This same word, however, has been found to be the term for a “title deed” to property. This passage, therefore, may have a meaning which is much more concrete than what has often been assumed. Accordingly, faith may simply be “the title deed of the things hoped for,” for it is faith which makes future hope a present possession.

The careful study of words has resulted in removing several instances of apparent contradiction from the Scriptures. In Galations 6:5 the King James text says, “every man shall bear his own burden,” but in the same chapter, verse 2, the text reads, “bear ye one another’s burdens.” Such renderings are understandably confusing to many people, but a close examination of the two different Greek terms employed in these verses soon clears up the difficulty. The word used in the second verse refers to excessively heavy burdens, and the word in verse 5 means one’s legitimate load. Contemporary Biblical studies have clarified the meanings of hundreds of such passages of Scripture, and it is thus little wonder that people throughout the world are demanding that they have revisions which will reflect certain of these more accurate renderings of the Word of God.

More Accurate Interpretations

All improvements in text and the meanings of individual words inevitably add up to more accurate interpretations. However, there is a class of changes which is somewhat distinct from these other two, for though the text remains the same and the meanings of the words are not significantly altered by lexical research, nevertheless, modern translations have profited by important exegetical suggestions. In John 1:9, for example, the traditional rendering of “the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” implies a kind of automatic enlightenment of each person on being born. However, this is not really the import of this passage. The theme of this Gospel is the coming of the light into the world, not the coming of men. Accordingly, most modern translations have followed an alternative rendering, “the true Light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world.”

Similarly, in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11 the traditional interpretation has been “the just shall live by faith.” This is, of course, quite a possible interpretation of the Greek expression, which is itself a literal rendering of the Hebrew original in Habakkuk. However, there is an equally valid rendering which is much more in keeping with the theme treated in Romans and Galatians, for in these two Epistles Paul was not dealing primarily with “living by faith” but with “being justified by faith.” Hence, the interpretation of “those who through faith are just shall live” should certainly be recognized, whether in the text or in the margin.

There are, of course, some persons who object to marginal notes in the Bible, for they think that these tend to detract from the authority of the Word, thus depriving the message of its full force. Interestingly enough, the translators of the King James Version were faced with this same accusation, and in an effort to forestall such criticisms they said in their introduction:

Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the margine, lest the authoritie of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that shew of uncertaintie, should somewhat be shaken. But we hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point … Therefore as Saint Augustine saith, that varietie of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversitie of signification and sense in the margine, where the text is not so cleare, must needs doe good, yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded.

It is unfortunate for the average reader of the Scriptures that in so many editions of the King James Version the hundreds of marginal notes introduced by the translators have been omitted (except for certain reference editions which include them in the reference column), for their continued printing would have done much to correct false ideas and attitudes about biblical revelation.

This does not mean that editions of the Bible should be filled with the differences of scholarly viewpoints, but complete honesty and integrity dictate that those who are aware of such legitimate diversities in rendering should indicate to the reader when there are alternatives. Anything less than this is not only misleading, but a betrayal of our Protestant heritage, which looks to the Scriptures rather than to human tradition for its authority.

Changes In Living Languages

Another important reason for continued revisions is that no living language stands still. It is in a state of constant change in every aspect, whether in the pronunciation of words (as reflected often in spellings), in grammatical forms, syntactic arrangements of words, or the meanings of terms. People of the seventeenth century had no difficulty understanding “prevent” in the sense of “go ahead of” (1 Thess. 4:15) or “let” (2 Thess. 2:7 and Romans 1:13) with the meaning of “hinder” (compare the legal phrase “without let or hindrance”). They rightly preferred “Holy Ghost” to “Holy Spirit,” but during the intervening years since 1611 the words ghost and spirit have completely changed meanings, for now ghost is understood by us as an apparition, precisely what spirit meant in the time of King James. People of that day could reckon by cubits, rods, furlongs, and firkins, but we need some equivalent in feet, yards, miles, and gallons. For the sake of greater accuracy and intelligibility we must use different words, e.g. “morsel” instead of “sop” (John 13:30), “prune” instead of “purge” (John 15:2), “rooms’ instead of “mansions” (John 14:2), and “Counselor” instead of “Comforter” (John 14:16), to mention only a few.

Rather than “changing the meaning” of the King James Version, as some have claimed, such modern words serve more to “restore the meaning.” In many instances the fault is not with the traditional translations, but with the English language which has changed, but most people are relatively unaware of what has happened.

Re-Emphasis Upon Intelligibility

The importance of communication in our contemporary world has made it fully evident that if a translation does not communicate the meaning of the original it is not really a translation, but a string of words. Accordingly, an idiom such as “children of the bridechamber” (which can be grossly misinterpreted) has usually been changed in modern translations to “wedding guests,” or more specifically “friends of the bridegroom.” Similarly, the strange phrase “bowels of mercy” has been rendered more meaningfully as “tender compassion.” However, in order to make for greater intelligibility modern translations have not only modified the forms of idioms, but have often simplified the complex structure of difficult sentences.

In John 1:14 the phrase “full of grace and truth” obviously refers to the Word, earlier in the verse, but when it is placed at the end of the verse, even though after a parenthesis, its meaning may be readily confused. Accordingly, a rearrangement of order is not only fully legitimate but helps to convey the meaning of the original, which in Greek is quite clear because of the grammatical forms, but which in English can be entirely misleading if the words are left in their Greek order. It is often necessary that long, involved sentences be broken up into shorter, more intelligible ones. Compare, for example, the traditional translations of Ephesians 1:3–14 (which is usually one long sentence, even as it is in Greek) with modern translations, which may use as many as half a dozen sentences, with considerable improvement in sense.

One must not imagine, however, that this striving for greater intelligibility is purely a contemporary development. The King James translators were for their day real pioneers in this field, and as a result they suffered from their critics. On the one hand, they shunned the newfangled ultramodern terms of the time proposed by the Puritans, and on the other, they rejected a host of traditional words used by the Roman Catholics and the strict conservatives. Their ultimate purpose was intelligibility, and in stating their intent, these translators wrote, “But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.” (By which, of course, they meant the common people.)

This basic principle employed by the King James revisers, namely, that the message in English should be as intelligible to the common man as the original was in its setting in “Canaan,” cannot be improved upon. This means, however, that if one is to follow the same principle one must not hesitate to revise the Scriptures or to use such revisions.

Today, even as in the seventeenth century, there are those whose basic suspicion of learning and scholarship has prompted them to decry revisions of the Scriptures, whether of the King James Version in that day or of various modern revisions in our own. Moreover, there has been in some circles the impression that revisions are generally the outgrowth of scholarly perversity in trying to upset people’s faith. Such charges have been made not only against various English revisions, but perhaps even somewhat more against revisions on the mission field. The truth of the matter is that most revisions are promoted primarily by a desire for evangelistic outreach, and this is especially true for the mission field. When a church is spiritually dead—content with its ritualistic practices and its liturgical forms—there is no life to encourage any revision. It is only when the church becomes aware of its need to communicate the Word of God with greater effectiveness that there is an urge to revise or to translate afresh.

Perhaps, however, the strangest contradiction in certain phases of contemporary Bible translation and revision is that some of those who most loudly proclaim their belief in literal inerrancy cling most tenaciously to traditional translations which in many instances are not based on the best manuscripts, and which at times contain inaccurate interpretations. Apparently, for fear that to give in an inch to modern scholarship will result in complete capitulation, those who affirm so strongly their acceptance of the truth as “God-breathed” frequently have resisted attempts to introduce any changes into the traditional forms. However, rather than being fearful of what might come from research in matters of text and interpretation and hence reluctant to participate in or promote such endeavors, conservatives should be in the forefront of any such undertakings. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose (except perhaps a few pet sermons) by the discovery of the truth as revealed to us in the earliest manuscripts and through the most reliable interpretations. Because the Bodmer II papyrus agrees with the best ancient manuscripts in not containing John 5:4 (the story of the angel disturbing the water in the Pool of Bethesda) and John 7:53 to 8:11 (the story of the woman taken in adultery), we should not be disturbed. Such facts should not prejudice anyone against textual studies, especially when the Bodmer II papyrus does contain such an important reading as “only begotten God.” However, our reactions to scholarship must not be dictated by whether or not present-day discoveries confirm or deny our own theological views. It is the “truth which shall make us free,” and it is this truth which alone can free us from our past errors (regardless of how precious they may have seemed) and reveal to us God’s Word and will. This new appreciation of truth, as expressed in the processes of revision and translation, is the only basis for a common rallying point for all those who love him who declared himself “the way, the truth, and the life.”

Eugene A. Nida is Secretary of the Translations Department of the American Bible Society. He holds the Ph.D. degree, in linguistics, from University of Michigan, and is author of Morphology, the Descriptive Analysis of Words, as well as of Learning a Foreign Language, and Customs and Cultures.

- More from Eugene A. Nida

Review of Current Religious Thought: November 11, 1957

John H. Gerstner

What of preaching in current thought and practice? What is the general character of twentieth-century preaching, judging from present-day pulpit men and literature?

Perhaps we can get an historic perspective by glancing at Harry Emerson Fosdick, who is regarded by many as the greatest preacher of our time, and Jonathan Edwards, who is regarded by virtually all as the greatest preacher of the eighteenth century (at least in America).

Though always a candid opponent of historic, creedal Christianity, which he usually dubbed “Fundamentalism,” Dr. Fosdick receives high praise from Dr. Ganse Little (The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, February 1957). “We must hasten to add,” he remarks, “as Dr. Fosdick does himself, that here is a man literally ‘saved by grace’ for a ministry of unsurpassed helpfulness to men in every walk of life for well on towards fifty years.” Dr. Fosdick believes in “grace” in essentially the same way Pelagius believed in “grace”—and as Augustine proved that Pelagius’ “grace” was not the Bible’s grace, so Machen proved the same of Dr. Fosdick’s “grace.”

With respect to Dr. Fosdick’s “unsurpassed helpfulness,” a remark is in order. It probably would be generally granted that Dr. Fosdick was the most influential American preacher of the first half of the century (at least on ministers and the intelligentsia). Whether he was the most useful would depend, as he would gladly admit, on the soundness of his message. If it was the truth of God, as he no doubt believes and Dr. Little with him, then it would follow that his usefulness was probably unsurpassed among preachers. If his gospel was “another gospel,” as many believe, then the effect of his life requires drastic re-evaluation. This is all obvious and no one would admit it sooner, we suppose, than Dr. Fosdick. Dr. Little, though giving a positively delightful review of the autobiography (The Living of These Days) does not wrestle with this problem, apparently because he believes it self-evident that Fosdick’s message is basically true and wholesomely liberating.

Of especial interest to us is the turning point in Fosdick’s life. One of the early and pivotal events was his repudiation of the preaching of the coming wrath of God (hell). Such preaching turned him from “orthodoxy” permanently and accounts for his lifelong crusade against “Fundamentalism.”

Now the turning point in the career of Edwards was precisely the opposite. He had sore problems, as a young theological student at Yale, about divine sovereignty and particularly its exercise in the damnation of some men. However, from feeling this was a “monstrous” doctrine he was inwardly persuaded of the “sweetness” of divine sovereignty and yielded himself absolutely and unquestionably to it. It became the dominant note in his preaching that God “was sovereign in the matter of salvation” and the sermon which he regarded as most fruitful in conversions is entitled “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners.” Edwards preached much more than this theme and other than this theme, but he did preach this theme.

And certainly this is a striking contrast, that the most eminent preacher of 1750 stressed the absolute sovereignty of God, even in salvation and damnation, while the most eminent preacher of 1950 found himself in lifelong rebellion against such sovereignty.

What is true of these two champions of the pulpit is an epitome of others, and the cue to twentieth-century preaching in general. It reveals itself in the very way in which most sermons begin. Never did Edwards, or virtually any Puritan, begin with other than the Word of God and its close exposition. Present-day homilies, by contrast, seldom begin with serious exposition unless the text is narrative in character and affords opportunity to tell an interesting and unfamiliar Bible story. Early Puritans used illustrations sparingly even when they, like the parables of Christ, were basically analogous to the revealed truth. In most sermons we now read or hear, the text illustrates the illustration rather than vice versa. The homiletical tail is wagging the homiletical dog, and most of the time the tail itself is only pinned on. But the illustrations—independently considered—are usually very good. As far as the biblical content of modern sermons is concerned, there is simply no comparison with Puritan preaching. One learned something about the Word of God then, while now he usually comes out of church better informed about Saroyan, Ibsen, Freud or Eisenhower. We are having a preaching of the word indeed—but it is the word of man.

The eighteenth-century pulpit was quite down-to-earth and practical, but preaching was always related to eternity—sub specie aeternitatis. This century seldom rises above an obsession or probes any deeper than a frustration. Here is the flyleaf of a current book on preaching: “Emphasizing that good preaching is doctrinal preaching applied to life, this book will assist pastors of all denominations to prepare sermons that will minister to the anxiety, insecurity, loneliness and frustration that beset our times.” Preachers seem to dabble more in amateur psychology than exegesis; they would be embarrassed by a person under conviction of sin, would talk a man out of feelings of guilt, and if confronted by someone fleeing from the wrath of God would be sure he was a paranoic.

It is no wonder that a layman has the courage to write: “What’s the Matter with Protestant Preaching?” (Church Management, September 1957.) This would take as much audacity, we should think, as it would take for us to write “How plumbers may improve their skill.” Men recognize that education, medicine, bricklaying and the like are the work of those specially trained in such subjects. But any one who hears sermons seems qualified to issue canons to direct the preacher who has usually had four years of general and three years of special training in this divine business. We are concerned to note that such supposed lay competence is a symptom of the breakdown of the awareness of the high calling of the ministry on the part of those to whom they minister. It hardly needs saying that this breakdown on the part of the laity is at least in part occasioned by the ministry’s own loss of a sense of specian vocation.

If preachers insist on competing with psychiatrists as counselors, with physicians as healers, with politicians as statesmen and with philosophers as speculators, then these specialists have every right to tell them how to preach. If a minister’s message is not based on “Thus saith the Lord,” then as a sermon it is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot of the specialists in the department with which it deals.

- More from John H. Gerstner

Books

Book Briefs: November 11, 1957

Do-It-Yourself Religion

Stay Alive All Your Life, by Norman Vincent Peale, Prentice-Hall. $3.95.

The writings of Dr. Peale are easily criticized, but the importance of his work cannot be underrated. As pastor, he has attempted to deal specifically and remedially with the problems of his people. By the use of psychiatrists as a part of the church counseling program, he has emphasized the relation of mental and emotional health to spiritual health, and by his stress on such a healing as revivifying ministry, he has brought back into focus the fact that salvation includes the redeeming and enjoying of our lives here and now. All this constitutes a program of major importance and one deserving of study and commendation. Unfortunately, Peak’s thinking does not live up to the promises implicit in his program.

First of all, any emphasis on biblical faith is utterly lacking. Peak’s God is the God of all religions, and all men have “the instinct of God and immortality” (p. 300). God is never presented as Judge, nor even as Saviour. In the process of attaining help, God is essentially passive and is appropriated by men. Jesus Christ is quoted by Peak, though not so often as his many great friends, but there is no expressed regard for his Person and his atoning work. Man works, not God, nor Christ.

Testimonials abound in the book, but they are not to Jesus but to Peak and his friends of “inner power.” What we have here is not religion, nor is it even moralism. Peak does not deal with problems of good and evil, but only of “right and wrong” (p. 144f); moral categories are replaced by neutral ones, correct and incorrect. The “supreme personal test at all times” is not, Am I a saved man, or even, Am I a good man, but rather, “ ‘Am I a right person?’ If you are ‘right’ things tend to go right” (p. 156). Peak defines religion thus: “Religion is a scientific methodology for thinking your way through problems” (p. 147). There is here neither religion nor moralism, but only self-help.

It is significant that only twice does Peak deal with guilt feelings (not sin or guilt in itself or as related to God), and on the first instance he urges its suppression. “Allow no sense of guilt to take the luster off your spirit. It’s the greatest of all causes of ennui”; rather, enthusiasm, “meaning ‘God within,’ ” is to be cultivated (p. 43). In the second instance he merely observes “the close relationship of guilt to tension” and finds it strange that the personality retains indiscretions like “pockets of spiritual poison” (p. 165f). He has no answer to this other than to have affirmative thoughts relieve your tensions. Peak speaks much of faith, but it is not faith in God, but “faith in faith,” which means in your capacities (pp. 1, 12, 22, 263, etc.).

Second, any real relationship to medical and psychiatric knowledge is lacking. There is a seeming reliance on psychosomatics, but actually Peak reverses the opinions of such theory. Instead of leaning on psychosomatic medicine, he favors the reverse, i.e., the body’s determination of the mind. By physical exercises and enacted routines, the mind is given spiritual power. Peak is thus closer to Yoga and Hinduism than to anything in Scripture or in psychosomatics. To develop “dynamic life … put animation in your daily work” (p. 110). To be vital, act vital. To be happy, practice joy (p. 172, 221f, etc.). Significant is his extended citation of “the practical program for maintaining continuous energy” of the late Lawrence Townsend, which meant nude sunbathing, the “emptying” of the mind of all “thought poisons” (we should “flush negatives” away, p. 33), plus the following affirmation, spoken aloud, standing tall:

I breathe in pure, beautiful, positive thoughts of God and Jesus Christ, which entirely fill my conscious and superconscious mind, to the total elimination of all hatred and malice, which, with God’s help, I dismiss completely from my conscious, unconscious, and superconscious mind.

This gave Townsend “conquest of the aging process, and … demonstrated conclusively the validity of his method” (p. 132 ff).

It would be easy to go on and cite ridiculous instances of Peak’s thinking (e.g., the possibility of the power of positive thinking in fishing, p. 16), but it is hardly necessary. This is neither religion, moralism, medicine, or anything more than self-help baptized with a sprinkling of devout-plus-medical phrases. For those who believe in self-help, this is the answer. For those who believe in the God of Scripture, the reality and validity of good and evil, and the grace of God unto salvation, there is nothing here but the frenzy of guilty life and the misery of creeping death.

R. J. RUSHDOONY

Significant Collection

Selected Letters of John Wesley, by Frederick C. Gill (editor). Philosophical, New York, 1956. $4.75.

John Wesley has left to the Christian world a collection of letters significant not only in their quantity, but in the range of subjects with which they dealt. Some 2,670 of them have been collected, written over a period of seventy years, and addressed to every type of person living in the England of his day and to some in the New World. It is in these letters that he often expressed himself more truly than in the more precise discourses which he left in writing.

This collection of 275 letters has been made to offer to the busy reader something of a cross-section of this correspondence, and particularly, to exhibit the wide range of Wesley’s interests. The most that can be given in a review is an indication of the major subjects with which the letters published deal. First of all, they sketch for us the life of a disciplined man, selfless in his labors for his Societies. He appears before us as tireless in his travels, intensive within his extensive labors, for he pursued his calling by house to house visitation and by constant personal interviews.

His correspondence with kings and prime ministers grew out, not of a desire to curry favor, but to maintain the cause of his Societies, particularly against the charge of disloyalty. The people called Methodists were at the same time a joy and a surprise to him. As he writes (p. 105), “… the more I attend the service of the Church in other places, the more I am convinced of the unspeakable advantage which the people called Methodists enjoy … The church where they assemble is not gay or splendid … but plain as well as clean. The persons who assemble there are … a people most of whom do, and the rest earnestly seek to, worship God in spirit and in truth.”

Wesley’s letters reveal foibles, very human foibles; he can be sentimental, or he can be withering; at times he seemed to be whimsical. The letters dealing with the question of his marriage are selected with a view to giving an over-all picture of this event in his career. The reader will admire a great deal in the side of Wesley’s character which this correspondence reveals. The range of his other interests amazes us; he had a very practical interest in diet, in electricity, in psychology and in the use of herbs for their curative properties. He kept a hand upon movements of thought no less than upon trends in the religious practices of his time. Best of all, he was a man of tremendous force and unquestioned dedication.

This volume can be recommended for its balanced insight into the life and work of this cosmopolitan figure. The Editor is correct in his statement at the end of the Preface: “His letters still live, and are characteristic of the man, showing unsuspected angles of his mind, reflecting vividly the life and spirit of the age, and revealing the birth and growth of a nationwide revival …” Here is a collection of the most significant of them.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Sunday School Methods

Informal Talks on Sunday School Teaching, by Ray Rozell, Grand Rapids International Publications, distributed by Kregel’s, Grand Rapids. 160 pp., $2.00.

Do you consider yourself a capable Sunday School teacher—one who possesses knowledge concerning the technique of teaching? Read this book and you will find how much can still be learned.

Here is a book that is true to its title. It presents a wealth of plain and intensely practical hints on teaching. The meaning of teaching and the importance of knowing the pupil’s needs and the teacher’s aims, the know-how of the pupil learning process and the methods to be followed—all this and more is systematically discussed. The treatment given these matters by the pedagogically astute author is as interesting as it is extensive.

The author rightly states that it is essential that the teacher be motivated by a Christian philosophy of life. But it is at this point that we find it difficult to follow the author. His philosophy—like too much present-day Sunday School material—is off-center. Instead of being God-centered or Christ-centered, it is pupil-centered. The whole teaching program is directed to supplying pupil needs. Even the Bible is said to be a “tool” to this end. Says the author, “It is the pupil that we are teaching and not the Bible.… In all of our lesson planning and presentation we must keep the pupil at the center” (p. 33). To make the pupil central in our teaching is to teach the pupil that he is the center. To make one who is an image of God central is an affront to him of whom he is an image.

To be sure, we must analyze the needs of our pupils and seek to supply them. We also agree that teaching should be impelled by a specific aim. But just what is this need and aim? Is it the need and aim envisioned by the mother of James and John who requested Jesus that her boys might be leaders in his kingdom and share his glory? The teacher who is so minded should be told in the words of Jesus, “You know not what you ask.” To share Christ’s glory is to drink Christ’s cup of death on the cross. Not the promotion of the individual, but the daily crucifixion of this individual with Christ, is the basic need of our pupils and the fundamental aim of Christian teaching. The “I” as a center must be crucified that the resurrected Christ may be central in their lives (Gal. 2:20).

MARK FAKKEMA

Valuable Tool

The Church in Soviet Russia, by Matthew Spinka. The Oxford University Press, New York, 1956. $3.25

A problem in the world church today is that of the church in Eastern Europe. A scholar who has made a careful study of this problem is Matthew Spinka of the Hartford Theological Seminary. His thesis in the volume before us is that the Soviet state, in the early years of the Bolshevik revolution wholly antipathetic towards the church in Russia, now utilizes the church as a valuable tool for its own purposes and policies (p. 94 et al.).

A disastrous event hardly equalled in “the whole course of church history” was the resolution of the Karlovtsi conference in November, 1921, in which a large number of Russian emigre ecclesiastical leaders called upon God to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to restore the House of Romanov to the throne (p. 24ff). The revolutionary Communist leaders, remembering the earlier slavish subservience of the church to the Tsar, interpreted the resolution as further proof of reactionary church political policies and the church itself between the anvil and the hammer. In his struggle for church autonomy Tikhon, who was the first leader of the post-revolutionary church (1917–25) and became patriarch, at first fought the regime. Within a year, however, he saw that that policy could only end in defeat so he altered it to secure for his church autonomy within the state. Tikhon became convinced, especially during his imprisonment (1922) that non-interference in politics was the policy necessary for the church’s survival. The reward for this change was that the state gave him the legal right to administer the church.

Tikhon’s successor, Sergei, sought increasing state recognition and in 1927 signed a pact with the state which made the church subservient to it. The year previous 117 bishops were exiled and the whereabouts of 40 others was unknown. “By this systematic weeding out of the best elements of the Russian episcopate the GPU in the end succeeded in purging the church of all who posessed moral courage to oppose the policies of the state” (64). Sergei himself spent three and one-half months in prison that year during which he decided to sign the historic document, the most notable incident of his eighteen-year tenure of office. The “Declaration” stated that the Soviet government was guiltless of any wrongdoing in its relations to the church and placed the blame instead on church leaders themselves. Therafter patriarch Sergei cooperated increasingly with the government even declaring that “in the Soviet Union no religious persecution has ever existed, nor does it now exist”; that “churches are closed not by governmental order but because of the will of the inhabitants, and in many cases even the decision of the faithful”; that “the reports concerning cruelties of the agents of the Soviet government in relation to certain priests absolutely do not correspond to reality and are lies”; that “priests themselves are guilty of not making use of the freedom of preaching granted them”; and that “the church itself does not desire to open theological training institutes” (p. 78f).).

Sergei’s subordination to the state won for the church certain privileges. In 1937 the Soviet government for the first time since the revolution included in its census a statement concerning religious affiliation and revealed that 57% of the adult population was related to the church and that those persons declared themselves to be believers (p. 80). Other considerations were given the church. The shift in Soviet policy is shown by the author to have been greatly accelerated when Nazi Germany broke its pact with Russia in June 1941 and invaded the country. “The (Soviet) regime was now faced not only with a powerful foreign invaded, but also with the possibility of revolt at home” (82). To the surprise of many, including the regime, the church remained steadfastly loyal and Sergei used everything at his command to serve the “holy” Soviet cause, his “sycophantic glorifications of the ‘great, God-given leader of the Russian people’—Stalin—(being) notorious. The church thus ceased to be a Church, and became an adjunct of the state. This is the tragedy of the Russian Church and its leadership” (p. 863. Spinka believes that the present state of the church in Russia is, in “many particulars, worse than ever before.”

The present Patriarch, Alexei, continues Sergei’s policy of unconditional service to the state. His first official act was a letter to Stalin, dated May 19, 1944, in which he pledged unswerving loyalty to the “God-appointed leader.”

Second to Alexei in the Russian Church is Metropolitan Nikolai who has striven to outdo his superior in singing the praises of the Soviet communist regime. Professor Spinka avers that his eulogy of Stalin on the 26th anniversary of the October Revolution has been “rarely exceeded by the most notorious communist sycophants.” “Our church members,” it says, “along with the entire population, discern in our Leader the greatest man that has ever been born in our country. For he unites in his person all the characteristics mentioned above in connection with our Russian ancient heroes and the great military leaders of the past” (p. 110). One wonders whether de-Stalinization has meant anything to Alexei and Nikolai, the present leaders of the Russian church. (cf. Matt. 15:14)

The author’s thesis includes the proposition that the Soviet government encourages intercourse between Russian Church heads and those of “satellite” countries as a means of extending and strengthening Soviet influence over those countries (last chapter). Alexei’s ambition of becoming head of all Orthodox people coincides with the political aims of the Soviet government and “Church and state can work hand in glove to gain these objectives” (p. 121).

The report of the delegation of the National Council of Churches which visited the Soviet Union last March is in no way contradictory to the positions elaborated by Dr. Spinka but rather agrees therewith (Christian Century, vol. 73, p. 428; cf. an interpretation, p. 480). One wonders then what prompted The Chicago Daily Tribune to editorialize that the leader of that delegation “came back talking nonsense about the position of the churches in Russia” (Dec. 1, 1956), or if the writer had read that leader’s report (summary in Presbyterian Life, April 28, 1956).

Spinka’s claim that the Soviets use the church to Soviet advantage is true not only of Orthodoxy. One needs only to read the monthly reports published by the Foreign and Information Department of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Czechoslovakia, or the tightly-controlled Hungarian Church Press, to observe the same there.

In closing I wish to mention another essay of Prof. Spinka, Church In Communist Society: A Study in J. L. Hromadka’s Theological Politics (Hartford Seminary Foundation Bulletin, 1954), the reading, and re-reading, of which has been to this person, a former student of Dr. Hromadka, a painful, but necessary, experience.

M. EUGENE OSTERHAVEN

Church And State

The Christian and the State, by H. M. Carson, Tyndale, London, Is, 6d.

This 48-page pamphlet is published in a series entitled “Foundations of Faith,” planned to cover a wide range of subjects, and particularly to answer questions which may arise in the minds of intelligent Christians “who have reached the final stage of their school course or have recently begun studying at a university.”

The subject of the Christian’s relationship to the state is one which is increasingly important when the state is accepting larger responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens and expecting in return a fuller recognition of its position. Mr. Carson obviously regards Scripture as the final court of appeal, and in that court he ably enforces the duty of prayer for the state, and of obedience to it, limited only where the state’s demands are in clear conflict with conscience.

He is on more debatable ground when he maintains that Christian participation in politics is not ruled out by Scripture and discusses particularly the Christian’s use of the vote in elections. He has no hesitation in accepting capital punishment as a right which, however sparingly it may be used, is included in Paul’s reference to rulers “bearing the sword.” But he states the arguments for and against Christian participation in war without declaring definitely for one view or the other.

The final chapter, “Lessons from History,” ends with a serious warning against the danger of the church becoming “a subsidiary department of the state” in lands where totalitarian government prevails. The booklet should go far towards clarifying the thinking of young Christians who are asking, or ought to be asking, “What does the Bible teach about the relations of the individual Christian, and the church as a whole, to the state?”

FRANK HOUGHTON

“Special Testimony” Girl Gives Doll to Queen

George Burnham

Christianity in the World Today

The Filipino pastors, many of whom had suffered great persecution at the hands of the Japanese during World War II, had a common bond with the big American who was singing to them.

He also had known sorrow.

Fague Springmann, who has sung for the last three Presidents of the United States, had taken a brief vacation from his position as professor of music at the University of Maryland to appear in a series of pastors’ conferences sponsored by World Vision, Inc.

Before singing, Fague told the listeners about Pamela, his seven-year-old daughter.

When Pamela was two weeks old, the doctors said she had a rare blood disease and could not live. She is alive, after 170 blood transfusions, each of which required from 10 to 12 hours to administer.

After each transfusion, Pamela’s temperature goes as high as 104 and she has to be packed in large amounts of ice.

It may be that she will have to take such transfusions as long as she lives, but Pamela grins through the suffering and touches the hearts of healthy people. For the last two years she has been the beautiful little girl smiling at you from the Red Cross posters.

From the time she has been big enough to talk, she has knelt by the bed with her mother and father to say her prayers.

Once, at a Red Cross rally, one of the minor speakers told a joke that was a little off-shade. Because of the occasion, it left a bad taste with many in the audience. The speaker was followed by Pamela. She said:

“First, I want to thank Jesus for giving me life, and second, I want to thank the Red Cross for giving me blood.”

That was all, but it was enough. The people cheered within their souls.

At another rally, Pamela was asked by a thoughtless reporter why she hadn’t been healed by all the blood transfusions. She replied, sweetly, “You see, if I didn’t have leukemia, I’d be the same as any other little girl. Now I have a special testimony for Jesus.”

Fague was attempting to explain some of the mysteries of the Bible to Pamela one night and, like many fathers, wasn’t doing too well. Then Pamela, in her own direct way, explained in one sentence what others have used up books trying to say:

“Are you trying to say, Daddy, that what people need is a Jesus transfusion?”

—GEORGE BURNHAM

Objectives Met

Billy Graham was limping badly and had to drag his best foot forward when he left New York Oct. 29 after the biggest spiritual battle of his ministry, but objectives of the Crusade had been met head-on and conquered, under God.

As he boarded the train, he may have gained small consolation in recalling that the limp was caused by an unimpressed ram that butted him off a North Carolina mountaintop and not by the expected pride, indifference and sophistication of America’s largest city.

During a testimonial dinner the night before, more than 800 guests, including top church and industrial leaders of the United States, told the evangelist how much they appreciated what had been accomplished.

The Rev. Phillips P. Elliott, speaking as president for the 1,700 churches of the Protestant Council of the City of New York, said objectives had been met far beyond expectations. He added:

“Those objectives were to win men to Christ, to make our city God-conscious, to strengthen the churches, to make New York City conscious of moral, spiritual and social responsibilities.”

The 16-week Crusade at Madison Square Garden, combined with outdoor rallies, attracted a total attendance of 2,149,700, with 66,577 decisions for Christ.

During the final week, 1,000 churches participated in a visitation campaign, with 6,000 members going out two-by-two to visit their neighbors. Dr. Jesse M. Bader, chairman of the visitation evangelism committee of the Protestant Council, said the teams made 24,000 calls on unchurched persons and reported more than 6,000 decisions for Christ. The concluding rally on October 27 at the Polo Grounds was attended by 40,000 on a bitterly cold afternoon, and 1,295 decisions were made.

In speaking about the results at the testimonial dinner, Dr. Graham said:

“I want to begin and end by giving God the glory. This was his doing. I believe God did these things because a number of spiritual laws were obeyed.

“The first law obeyed was the tremendous amount of prayer centered on New York. Prayer was organized in 109 countries.

“The second law obeyed was unity among churches of many different backgrounds. There has seldom been such unity for anything in the history of New York.

“Another was the authoritative preaching of his Word. When I quoted from the Word of God, it was like a rapier. I could feel the power. When I resorted to my own logic, I could feel the power leave.

“The fourth law obeyed was that there was dependence on the Spirit of God to do what it was impossible for man to do.”

In the wake of the Crusade, the Protestant Council announced an expanded program of evangelism calling for a budget of nearly $1,000,000. The General Assembly, in addition, approved the establishment of a Protestant Chapel at New York’s International Airport, costing $250,000.

The Council has signed a lease to take over the Graham Crusade offices, 165 West 46th St., for its evangelism head-quarters.

The Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the Council, said plans call for a stepped-up integrated youth program.

Also visualized, he said, was the continuance of the noon radio program and the telecast entitled “Impact.” A crusade for church attendance will be conducted throughout the metropolitan area during January, February and March.

Dr. Graham enthusiastically endorsed the program with this comment:

“We think nothing of spending $1,000,000 for one fighter plane that will be obsolete in three years. How can we do less for God?”

Killed In Africa

Dr. Sidney Robert Correll, medical missionary from Dayton, O., suffered fatal burns from a gasoline explosion in French West Africa on Oct. 15.

He attended the University of Dayton, Harvard, Wheaton College and Boston University Medical School.

People: Words And Events

Auca Lances—A partially destroyed house, with Auca lances crossed in the doorways, greeted Plymouth Brethren missionary Wilford Tidmarsh when he returned recently to the advance station he was opening down the Arajuno River inside Auca territory. Tidmarsh had started to build a house and clear a landing strip when he suffered an accident which necessitated his absence for two weeks. Conjecture centered on whether this was a kindly warning from “George,” the Auca contacted by the five missionary martyrs, or a threat from the more bloodthirsty members of his tribe.

Sign of Times—New suburban communities place the construction of supermarkets and taverns before churches, according to the Rev. Theodore Conklin of Syracuse, associate secretary of the New York State Council of Churches. Years ago, he said, churches in new communities often were built before the homes of parishioners.

Point of Law—Miami Circuit Judge John J. Niblack ruled that reading the Bible, requiring your spouse to wear skirts instead of blue jeans and insistence on church attendance does not constitute grounds for divorce. The judge said William Connelly, 25, was well within his rights on all three points” and denied Mrs. Martha Connelly, 19, her petition for divorce.

$30 Clergy Diploma—A housewife revealed in Los Angeles how she obtained, for $30.20, a church charter and certificate which permitted her to perform baptisms, marriages and burials as an ordained minister. Mrs. Juanita Purviance, 30, said she received the documents exactly a week after requesting them from the Universal Church of the Master, with headquarters at Oakland. Her testimony launched hearings by a State Assembly subcommittee into California diploma mills.

Christmas Barrage—The most intensive barrage of liquor advertising and propaganda in the history of Christmas is now hitting the American public. Trade journals will be filled with plans for an unprecedented campaign on the $350,000,000-plus holiday liqour market. A major clue to the advertising attack lies in business magazine reports that Christmas liquor sales have been tapering off. When the publication Advertising Requirements listed the Christmas gifts “most appreciated” by businessmen, liquor wasn’t even mentioned.

Alert Lutherans—That the United Lutheran Church has the largest membership among Lutheran bodies in the U. S., was quickly pointed out by readers (Oct. 14 issue). Its baptized members numbered 2,335, 352 in 1956, according to National Lutheran Council statistics, while the Missouri Synod was second, with a baptized membership of 2,152,412.

Seoul Campaign—Despite unseasonably cold weather and a drenching downpour of rain, 31,800 persons attended the final meeting of the (Oct. 4–20) Seoul Crusade of Dr. Bob Pierce, World Vision President. Total attendance was 296,045, with 5,657 decisions for Christ.

More Than Clubs—Congregational brotherhoods should be more than supper clubs, says Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of New York, president of the United Lutheran Church in America. He asserted, “Wide awake brotherhoods will find many types of service that they can do better than anybody else.… Fellowship is fine, but it is not enough.”

Divorced Persons—A minority group of Anglican clergymen in Birmingham diocese protested against a recent statement by Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, that Church of England law still forbids the remarriage of divorced persons while the former partner is still living. The protest followed a letter by Canon Bryan Green, Anglican evangelist, who said the Primate’s statement “seems to be nearer the idea of an infallible corporate spiritual authority within the Church of England, on the lines of papal infallibility, than to Anglican practice and discipline since the Reformation.”

Power Of Prayer

The following excerpt is from a recent letter written by Mrs. J. Edwin Orr from South Africa to Mrs. Billy Graham in Montreat, N. C.:

“When Edwin was campaigning in a very remote part of New South Wales, more than 500 miles from Sydney, a Christian man approached him and inquired about the Hollywood Christian Group.

“He said he’d been looking at an Australian picture magazine more than four years ago, and his eye was attracted by a photo of an attractive girl with the caption, ‘The Prettiest Girl in England.’ Having had nothing to do with the movies, he was not impressed, but a strange conviction from the Spirit burdened him to pray for her conversion. He personally felt it was a waste of time, nevertheless, he kept on praying for the girl. In 1954, the burden lifted, as if the Lord said, ‘You do not need to carry this burden any longer.’ He had no idea whether the girl had died or was truly converted, for he had never heard of a movie star being converted.

“But he remembered her name—Joan Winmill—and when Edwin checked dates with him, he found that the burden had lifted during the (Billy Graham) Harringay Campaign (in London), when you were actually dealing with Joan! The man’s name is Ellwood Fischer, and he is a great man of prayer. Naturally, he was greatly encouraged to learn that many of the conversions in Hollywood were genuine and Joan Winmill’s also.

“Knowing that you must be in touch with Joan, I thought you might wish to tell her how a stranger in far-off Australia prayed so long for her conversion.”

Staggering Study

Nationwide estimates on the number of fatal highway accidents in the United States involving drinking need to be revised upward to nearly 50 per cent of the total annual motor death toll, according to William N. Plymat, speaking at the Loma Linda Institute of Scientific Studies for the Prevention of Alcoholism.

Plymat, an insurance executive, told the Institute that at least 15,000 lives could be saved annually if all accidents involving alcohol could be eliminated. He based his estimate on recent traffic and laboratory tests, and said that even small amounts of alcohol frequently destroy inhibitions of drivers to restrain themselves from misconduct while behind the wheel.

Bible For Cadets

A total of 503 cadets at the U. S. Military Academy, West Point, were presented Bibles recently in a ceremony sponsored by the American Tract Society of New York City.

Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, president of the society, in delivering the sermon, said:

“The Bible is about history and morality, about human nature and sin. It tells not only about the past but also the future, about heaven and hell. It is about God and his greatness and righteousness, his justice and his love, and what he requires of us men. But, when we come to the more particular question, what is the Bible about, there is just one chief answer. It is this: Above everything else, the Bible is all about Jesus Christ. In the deepest and most living way, its purpose is to tell us about him who is ‘the wav, the truth and the life.’ ”

‘Peacemongering’

Queen Elizabeth II and President Eisenhower were in the congregation at Washington’s National Presbyterian Church when Dr. Edward L. R. Elson said “careless and irresponsible talk about peace” is “worse than warmongering.”

The pastor added:

“To talk about peace unrelated to moral principles is as dangerous for world order as saber-rattling and scowls at international borders.

“Jesus did not say, ‘Blessed are the peace-wishers.’ He did not say, ‘Blessed are the pacifists.’ He was quite emphatic. He said, ‘Blessed are those who make peace.’ ”

Others in the congregation included Prince Philip, Mrs. Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker and Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield.

Benefits Hit

An advisory opinion issued by the Social Security Administration in Washington, D. C., threatens to restrict the benefits of retired ministers and missionaries who are provided homes by the churches and denominations they served.

The agency held that if the rental value of a parsonage is designated as income for social security purposes in computing base earnings for benefits it also must be counted towards the maximum of $1,200 a year that a retired recipient of benefits is permitted to earn while receiving such benefits.

Charles Smith, associate director of the Washington office of the National Council of Churches, said “the new social security ruling disrupts many of the retirement plans worked out by the Protestant denominations.”

He pointed out that nearly all denominations make provision for their retired missionaries and many churches provide for their retired ministers to continue occupying a parsonage.

“As a result, the amount of cash income they can have and stay within social security limitations is not more than $300 a year in most instances,” he said.

Africa

Moslem Prime Minister

A fitful drizzle could not dampen the spirits of thousands of Nigerians who crowded the roads to get a look at their new Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and his newly-formed cabinet. For Nigeria, this was the last big step to independence, which is set for April 2nd, 1960. It opened a new era in the country’s government and is hoped to be the strong unifying force to pull the vastly tribalistic communities into one.

Balewa, who made his first trip to Mecca two months before, has always been the hero of the vast Nigerian North, often labeled the “Golden Voice of the North” because of his pleasing voice and excellent command of English. He once made the prophecy that the North would continue its march to the sea if the South felt it could go on for national independence alone.

In his opening speech to the House of Representatives he constantly stressed the need of unity—“On no account should we allow the selfish ambitions of individuals to jeopardize the peace of the 33 million law abiding people of Nigeria.”

Although a staunch Moslem by faith, the Prime Minister made a point of expressing his gratitude to what Christian missions have done for Nigeria.

“I would particularly like to refer to the Christian missionaries of all denominations who have done so much to encourage the development of the country,” he said. “They have the distinction of being the first in the field in spreading Western education and providing our peoples with modern medical facilities. We greatly admire their efforts and we shall continue to be grateful to them for all that they are doing.”

At the same time, the Prime Minister made it emphatic that “the future of this vast country of Nigeria must depend in the main on the efforts of ourselves to help ourselves.”

What a Moslem’s power will mean to Christian missions cannot as yet be told. But there is indication enough that the new Prime Minister, even though a Moslem, is dedicated most of all to strengthening the unity of the country in an effort to present it as eligible for independence from British rule. And for the present at least, the Prime Minister, in order to accomplish such a task, is doing all he can to bring economic, political, and religious groups into peaceful and harmonious coexistence.

J. L. J.

Going Again

The Nile Mission Press, founded more than 50 years ago in Cairo, Egypt as a center for the printing and distribution of Christian literature in the Arabic language for all of the Middle East, has resumed operations under a new set-up in Beirut, Lebanon. A program of publication work is being organized under direction of D. T. L. Howell there, in cooperation with a committee in England and America.

Nile Mission Press, whose work was interrupted last year at the time of the Suez crisis, was founded in 1905 by Samuel M. Zwemer and others, and throughout its long history has carried on a far reaching literature ministry in all of the Near and Middle East. At one time its catalog carried more than 800 titles of books available in Arabic. Renewal of the work in Beirut is being expedited by the formation of a committee of national Christians and with the cooperation of missions in the area. An office has been set up and the first list of new titles approved for printing and distribution, with George Jamil, a Lebanese, to assist Mr. Howell.

Far East

My Only Regret …

Portrait of a pastor, whose ministry changed from frustration to fruitfulness:

The little Korean, sitting alongside me on the one-hour flight from Seoul to Taegu, was in his 60’s. His face was lined from evident years of a hard life, but a deep calm seemed to radiate from him.

Traveling with the old gentleman was his son, a young man who smiled easily. They were the Rev. Yong S. Rhee, president of the Taegu School for the Blind and Deaf, and Kisu Rhee, his special assistant.

“My father has been the biggest inspiration in my life,” remarked Kisu. I thought of how refreshing this simple statement sounded, compared to the “old man” references heard so often among American teen-ages.

As we rode and talked, there developed the remarkable story of a man who can well be an inspiration to everyone.

The story really began, as is so often the case, with the sacrificial life of a mother who dedicated her son to God after she became a Christian and had her sight restored following seven years of blindness. In order to pay for her son’s education, she walked hundreds of miles year after year, peddling goods throughout North and South Kyongsang. Less than five feet tall and not very strong, she was continually racked by physical suffering as she struggled up mountain trails and crossed fields with her merchandise. But her strength was renewed daily, as she looked at the Cross and remembered the suffering of Jesus.

While at school, the son worked hard and served God devoutly. He showed such progress that he was invited to lead a church service in Taegu. At night he found time to practice his oratory in the market place.

“I was painfully conscious, however,” he said, “that my faith was not genuine, but only disguised.”

He related the troubles which began in 1919, the year of a major upheaval against Japanese imperialism. For his rebellious shouting, he spent one year in jail at Seoul. After release he refused to quit making speeches and spent three more years in jail at Taegu. A jailor’s cruel blow resulted in partial deafness.

“While suffering under this imprisonment,” he testified, “I realized more clearly my mother’s intention that I should be a pastor. I resolved to be a good one. After prison, I left for Japan to study at Kobe Seminary.

“After graduation, I still did not have a true belief in the grace of God. While desperately seeking this belief, I offered my life in the service of lepers. Two years after I joined the leprosarium, however, I resolved that I would quit my ministry unless God bestowed his grace upon me. The decision didn’t come easily. I tortured myself in prayer for several weeks but nothing happened until Christmas eve. During the 3 a.m. service, I asked, ‘Lord Jesus, have you ever seen such a sinner as I? Has there ever been such a wicked pastor? You love these lepers most of all human beings, erected this leprosarium and sent me to love them for you, but I did not love them. I am not a benefactor, but one benefitted.’

“While praying, my eyes overflowed with hot tears. Four hundred patients also shed tears of repentance. The whirlwind of grace sent by God never ceased to blow until the service had lasted five hours.

“After this, I could serve the patients with true love. I served them sincerely for 10 years under the protection and grace of God.”

Rhee, after this service, accepted pastorates in Korea, Manchuria and Japan.

With the liberation in 1945, he came home to Taegu. The leper-relief position was no longer open, but God had another big work for the faithful pastor. Park Yon Saeng, a blind man, impressed him with the importance of education for blind and deaf children. The school was opened on faith in 1947.

Money was hard to come by. To help support his young charges, he took over the job as labor section chief at Taegu jail and devoted the rest of his time to the school. The arrangement wasn’t satisfactory, in view of the great need among thousands, so he quit the jail job after seven months.

Monetary aid picked up slowly. Offerings on Christmas, 1949, from blind men and women across the United States, were sent to the school through Miss Helen Keller. The mayor of Taegu, Han Po Yong, provided desperately needed land.

The work was progressing wonderfully in 1950—when war again came to Korea. By August 30, the enemy was 120 kilometers northeast of Taegu. Refugees below Seoul were streaming southward.

In an attempt to rescue relatives at Songjiu, Rhee crossed the Naktong River on the same day that UN forces pulled back across the river. Shells began to fall all around. He hid in the mountains, among rocks and behind hedges until the day he was captured, Sept. 17—on charges of being a jail chaplain.

He arrived at a compound for prisoners just as those who had been murdered were being taken away. As his time for execution approached, an unusual order for reconsideration came through. But on Sept. 24 he was again sentenced to death.

“I was not troubled by the fear of death,” he said, “but by the fact that I had not been a better pastor and had not rendered more worthy service to the lepers and school for the blond.”

When given a chance to say his last words, he told the Communists why he had become a pastor and ended the little speech with these words: “I fear nothing, since I shall be in the Kingdom of Heaven after my death. My only misgiving is who will be my successor in the education of the blind and deaf.”

God intervened again, as a Communist official was touched by the words. “Set this old man free,” he ordered.

Returning to Taegu, Rhee found over 1,200 lepers and children praying for his safety!

More than 250 blind and deaf children are now taught how to live at the school, with World Vision, Inc., of Los Angeles, paying for the support of 185. World Vision, under President Bob Pierce, has made other valuable contributions to bolster support from Korean groups.

I walked through the corridors and watched the children at their studies. A blind boy smiled at something he was reading with his fingers. A deaf boy, who had never heard sound, struggled with the words, “How do you do … welcome.” Hundreds of hours of patient love and coaching had gone into the effort. Kim Jae Yul, a 14-year-old boy, was with a group of other children. He was blind and part of his right arm was gone as the result of a stray explosive picked up after the fighting, but he smiled as he sang a song, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”

Looking on proudly was the Rev. Yong S. Rhee, spared by God for a great work. He had been as blind in the beginning of his ministry as the children he was helping, but God had opened his eyes with bitter tears on Christmas morning in a leper colony.

—GEORGE BURNHAM

Korean Moderator

The Rev. Chen Pil Sun, pastor of Seoul’s Yong Dong Presbyterian Church, was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Korea at its 42nd General Assembly in Pusan.

The new moderator, a former secretary of the National Christian Council in Korea, won fame for his dramatic escape from Seoul’s notorious West Gate Prison in 1950 when he was being held for execution after capture by the communists. All his fellow prisoners were killed. Koreans call him “the man who jumped from his coffin.”

A highlight of the assembly was the welcome given to the Rev. Pang Chi Il, last Presbyterian missionary to be released by the Chinese communists. Mr. Pang is a second-generation China missionary, the son of one of Korea’s pioneers to Shantung province. He had been in China without furlough since 1937 and had been held with his family for eight years by the communists.

Continuing its insistence on high standards for the ministry, the assembly’s committee on examinations passed only 60 out of 130 candidates applying for admission to the Presbyterian ministry.

—S. H. M.

South America

Overflow Crowds

Dr. Oswald J. Smith, pastor of The Peoples Church, Toronto, has completed evangelistic campaigns at Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Overflow crowds were reported in each city, with a total of 1,579 registered decisions for Christ.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a subscriber to Religious News Service, Evangelical Press Service and Washington Report.

- More from George Burnham

Theology

Bible Text of the Month: 1 Corinthians 5:19

Augustine

To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Behold our Mediator! Not God without humanity, nor man without divinity; but intermediate between mere Deity and mere humanity, he is a human divinity, and a divine humanity.

As the salt-waters of the sea, when they are strained through the earth, they are sweet in the rivers; so the waters of majesty and justice in God, though terrible, yet being strained and derived through Christ, they are sweet and delightful.

To wit—This verse is designed further to state the nature of the plan of reconciliation, and of the message with which they were intrusted. It contains an abstract, or an epitome of the whole plan; and is one of those emphatic passages in which Paul compresses into a single sentence the substance of the whole plan of redemption.

Reconciliation

By reconciliation is meant the whole work of redemption. It is called reconciliation as it respects us as enemies, salvation as it respects us in a state of damnation, propitiation as we are guilty, redemption as captives, and bound over to punishment. Reconciliation, justification, and adoption differ thus: in reconciliation, God is considered as the supreme Lord and the injured party, and man is considered as an enemy that hath wronged him; in justification, God is considered as a judge, and man as guilty; in adoption, God is considered as a father, and man is an alien. Reconciliation makes us friends, justification makes us righteous, adoption makes us heirs.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK

That salvation implies the removal of man’s moral enmity to God is frankly admitted: but this is not inconsistent with firmly maintaining that it also necessarily supposes and requires the removal of God’s legal enmity to man. The party offended must be reconciled as well as the offender, before any real or permanent friendship can be effected. The reconciliation or atonement spoken of, is said to be effected by the death of Christ, whereas the removal of the enmity of man’s heart is more properly the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also represented as something synonymous with the non-imputation of trespasses, which itself is decisive of the sense in which it is to be understood.

WILLIAM SYMINGTON

Particularly, to Him belongs the praise of devising the stupendous plan of redemption, by which he reconciles to himself the rebellious children of men. In a way honorable to his holiness, justice, and truth, he removes the enmity of their mind; he subdues their rebellious will; he sheds abroad his love in their heart; he restores them to his favor and friendship; he renews them after his own image, and blesses them with all heavenly and spiritual blessings. This reconciliation is effected, not on the ground of their repentance; not by works of righteousness which they have done; not by the arbitrary exercise of mercy, but through the mediation of his own dear Son, who, by his obedience and death, has satisfied divine justice; magnifies and honored the law, and made a full atonement for sin.

WILLIAM LOTHIAN

To reconcile unto himself, does not mean to convert, or to render friendly to himself. This is plain first, because this reconciliation is said to be effected by the death of Christ as a sacrifice; and secondly, because what follows is not a proof of God’s converting the world, but it is a proof of his being propitious. The proof that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ (i.e., in his death) is that he does not impute to men their trespasses, and that he has established the ministry of reconciliation. The forgiveness of sin and the institution of the ministry are clear evidence that God is propitious.

CHARLES HODGE

In verse 18, it is said, God “hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” This does not mean that God changed our heart, and made us love him, and appointed the Apostle to announce that fact. It can only mean that through Christ, through what he did and suffered for us, peace is restored between God and man, who is able and willing to be gracious. This is the gospel which Paul was commissioned to announce, namely, as follows in the next verse, God is bringing about peace; he was in Christ effecting this peace, and now is ready to forgive sin, i.e., not to impute unto men their trespasses; and therefore the apostle urges his readers to embrace this offer of mercy, to be reconciled unto God; i.e., to accept his overture of reconciliation. For it has a sure foundation. It rests on the substitution and vicarious death of Christ. He was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. It is impossible, therefore, that the reconciliation of which the apostles speak as effected by the cross or death of Christ, should, in its primary and main aspect, be a subjective change in us from enmity to the love of God.

CHARLES HODGE

Reconciling—The greatest controversy lies in this word, whether by it be meant God’s reconciliation to us, or our laying down our enmity against God. Socinus and his followers say God was not angry with man, he was reconciled before, but that this place is meant of affection towards God, because it is said we are reconciled to God, and not God to us.… By reconciliation of us to God in this place cannot be meant our conversion, or any act of ours. Because the reconciliation here spoken of was the matter of the apostles’ sermons, and the great argument they used to convert the world to God. If, then, that sense were true, it would be an impertinent argument, unworthy of those that Christ called out to be the first messengers and heralds of this redemption. The sense of their discourse would run thus: God hath already converted you, therefore be converted to him; as it is nonsense to exhort a man to do that very act which he hath already done. Also, this reconciliation doth formally consist in the non-imputation of sin to men. Now this is God’s act, not the creatures.

STEPHEN CHARNOCK

Fruit Of Reconciliation

The effect of God’s being reconciled, or his reconciling the world to himself, is in these words, “not imputing to them their trespasses.” God doth so reconcile us to himself by Christ as not to impute our trespasses to us; that is, not dealing with us according as justice required for our sins, upon the account of Christ’s work, remitting the penalty due to them, laying away his anger, and receiving us to favor. This is the immediate fruit of the reconciliation spoken of, if not the reconciliation itself.

JOHN OWEN

Sin at the same time creates enmity in the human heart toward God, an enmity removed also by faith in the great propitiation. Thus the cross is the symbol of peace. He who died on it possessed God’s nature, the offended party, and man’s nature, the offending party; and thus being qualified to mediate between them, his blood was poured out as a peace-offering. The law is satisfied, and guilty sinners are freed from the curse: an amnest is proclaimed; God reconciles the world unto himself, and justified man has peace with God.

JOHN EADIE

The evidence that the death of Christ has been accepted as an expiation for sin, of infinite value and efficiency, is the fact that God hath commissioned his ministers to announce to all men that God is reconciled and ready to forgive, so that whosoever will may turn unto him and live.

CHARLES HODGE

- More from Augustine

Eutychus and His Kin: November 11, 1957

Daniel L. Eckert

SERMON SATELLITE

From Deepwell Heights to Cloverleaf Vista the pulpits of this part of Exurbia have all viewed sputnik on the horizon. Comments on the world’s little red fellow traveler range from the political to the allegorical. The rector of All Souls’ was in splendid form, relating sputnik to Atoms for Peace, the prophets, the geophysical year, Zionism, and integration. It made you shiver just to hear him launch the word spooot-neek. The visiting speaker at the Village Gospel Tabernacle favored the pronunciation sputnick, and discussed the prophetic implications of the red moon.

Old Dr. Van Dyke, the emeritus pastor at Second Church, preached for Dr. Jones who was down with the flu. Surprisingly, he mentioned sputnik, too. He always chooses a text, and was preaching on the Tower of Babel passage in Genesis 11. (He insisted that it was not just a tower but a city.) It was a moving sermon. He pictured the race for the conquest of space as manifesting man’s pride and pretension. The motive that thrust sputnik soaring into orbit is the same that built the tower: “Let us make us a name …” As the patriarchal preacher described God’s sovereignty over human rebellion, he seemed to be looking down at our globe from a perspective more remote than a satellite could achieve. He was speaking as from eternity, proclaiming the Word of God.

Most memorable was his contrast between the pride of Babel and the worship of the chosen seed (Genesis 4:26): making a name for ourselves, or calling on the name of the Lord.

It was a little surprising that Dr. Van Dyke began with the sputnik. His conclusion was not novel, however. His sermon ended at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, as all his sermons have done for half a century.

EUTYCHUS

WORDS OF GOD AND MEN

It seems to me that the objective authority must ever be the self-revealing Spirit of God dealing with the individual soul. A good illustration … is a note in Bruce Metzger’s article on the Apocrypha, where he says, “John Bunyan … received help … from the text … he could not at first locate.… When at length he found it in the Apocrypha (Ecclus. 2:10), he was honest enough to confess that ‘though it was not in those Texts that we call Holy and Canonical, yet for as much as this sentence was the sum and substance … of the Promises, it was my duty to take the comfort of it; and I bless God for that word, for it was of God to me.” … My experience is that Bunyan’s principle is the principle which is followed by all Christians.…

Danville, Ill.

Publication of the Bible with the Apocrypha … can result too much in the average Bible reader’s mistaking the apocryphal writings from the written Word of God, and to distraction from the sacred text.… I take serious issue, in kindness, with Dr. Metzger’s use of Bunyan’s experience of relief from despondency through the use of the Apocrypha. It seems to me that Dr. Metzger is unintentionally being irreverent of the potentialities of the Holy Scriptures when he suggests that Bunyan might never have overcome his spiritual despondency if he had not been familiar with the Apocrypha. Certainly, Holy Writ itself … contains promises of an efficient enough nature to have relieved Bunyan.…

Pine St. Baptist Church

Scranton, Pa.

MISSIONARY PRIORITY

… Dr. Smith (“Christianity and the Pagan World,” Sept. 16 issue) mentions the motto which has virtually become synonymous with his name.… “Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?” Now this motto is very effective in creating missionary interest, and no doubt … is asked out of genuine Christian concern.… Nevertheless I submit that this motto is a purely human invention … blatantly contrary to the Holy Scriptures. There is no support … either in precept or by example. Indeed … Paul could wish himself anathema, if possible, for the salvation of his kinsmen.… This, however, does not justify Dr. Smith’s motto.… On his first Journey Paul visited the Asia Minor cities twice.… Shall we accuse Paul of not having a proper missionary spirit? Not only so, but Paul also visited these cities on his second journey and also on the third. Furthermore, Paul did not cover as much ground as possible, but rather spent considerable time in several places.… My purpose … is not to minimize Dr. Smith’s worthy emphasis on mission work, but rather to defend the Word of God which Dr. Smith himself loves.…

Ashland, Ohio

JUDGMENT AND REWARD

You may go jump in the lake anytime, as far as I’m concerned.

Toronto, Ontario

The very title CHRISTIANITY TODAY indicates that you believe real Christianity is changing.… Evangelist ED NELSON Aurora, Colo.

The thing that impresses me most about your journal is that it is criticized both by liberals and fundamentalists. Any magazine able to boast of such an accomplishment must stand in a fairly sound position. I personally disagree with a good percentage of what I read there; but occasionally I find an article which is reward enough for the wading.…

Christian Church

Alamosa, Colo.

I especially like the scholarly presentations relating Biblical Christianity to our cultural and everyday life.…

Wheaton, Ill.

Please be congratulated for CHRISTIANITY TODAY; what it does for Christian apologetics and dialectic is sorely needed for evangelical missionary intelligence.…

London, Eng.

Your magazine is top-notch, thoroughly sound, theologically incisive, intellectually respectable and vital.…

Third Presbyterian Church

North Tonawanda, N. Y.

I’m only a housewife, but your magazine gives me much joy … as I read the sound, scriptural articles.…

Asheville, N. C.

I would judge … that it is not designed as a popular magazine, but rather for those of a specifically theological type of mind. For such I believe you are rendering splendid service.…

United Church

Cottage City, N. Y.

I’m a retired minister, but am not retired from good literature. So I’m enclosing a check.…

Mocksville, N. C.

I enjoy CHRISTIANITY TODAY and commend you for fulfilling an important need in the Christian publications field.

Salem, Ore.

Secretary of State

I don’t know of another publication doing the same job, a job that needs to be done.…

Athis-Mons, Seine-et-Oise, France

“JINE ‘EM!”

In the June 24th issue I read with interest the reported accounts of both the Southern and American Baptist Convention sessions. Without any malice or ill-will, permit me to make public a comment which I believe the article will justify. It is difficult for some of us American Baptists—even those from the South such as I—to accept and reconcile the statement quoted from Southern Baptist president, C. C. Warren’s opening address that, “it is not the policy of Southern Baptists to go as invaders anywhere.” But as a matter of fact, they do—anywhere! Members of other denominations of my acquaintance have also voiced concern not because of fear or jealousy or competition but on the basis of Christian ethics and mutual respect.… If present trends persist, the only hope of the Baptists of the North is to give the victory to the South they lost almost 100 years ago and “jine ’em!”

Gilbert Memorial First Baptist Church

Mount Clemens, Michigan

GOD AND SEGREGATION

Race Relations is by no means the most important problem agitating Christian consciousness today. The real problem is the inability of scholars to accept God’s universal morality and a frightening ability to project with scintillating astuteness their own rationalizations. It is the chronic failure to acquaint revelation with fact. I want to point out several half truths employed by Dr. Ellis (“Segregation and the Kingdom of God,” March 18 issue) so common in the type of presentation made in his article. As I do so I want to stress that writers in religious journals should be aware that nonbelievers read their articles as well as believers. I am sure that the non-believer is strengthened in his non-belief by this featherlike thinking.…

The basic assumption of Dr. Ellis is that the white man in the North and South has been, is, will be, and ought to be the dispenser of morality and freedom. Thus when he (the white man) speaks from European culture or southern tradition all other men “ought” to condescend. With this anthropomorphic morality Dr. Ellis calls Paul, Barnabas and Jesus together for a Divine premise to his “ought”. Dr. Ellis’s procedure is not intellectually honest. He poses the weakest argument of the integrationists and addresses it to the strongest argument of the segregationists. He says for instance, “Only a naive appraisal can reduce the problem of race to one of skin color.” He does this, implying unfairly, that the integrationists base their entire defense upon this immature judgment. He then suggests the privilege of the white South’s “right” to preserve its European and racial and cultural heritage. Not a word is mentioned of the right of the Negro. It is assumed that the desires of the white man are axiomatically right and that the desires of the Negro are prohibitive. It must be pointed out that while Dr. Ellis employs the word “right” for the white South he should really use “desire” of the white South as I have indicated the desire of the Negro. Desires of various groups may clash, but Divine rights of one group can never clash with the Divine rights of another. A more accurate statement could have been made by Dr. Ellis had he said that the white South holds it to be a right to preserve their advantage rather than their heritage! The modern world holds little brief for heritage or tradition—production is the theme everywhere except in race relations.

In discussing the rights of the South Dr. Ellis says that the most important point is that the people who must live in the situation are convinced for reasons sufficient to them that integration will be detrimental to society. Dr. Ellis should have said that the white people are convinced that integration is an evil. There is a veneration here of a closed mind—“sufficient to them.” How dangerous it is when justice is based on reason sufficient to a few interested in preserving their own culture at any price! The man who robs a store may do so for reasons sufficient to him. Does this make it right? How unfair it is to the millions of personalities which are innocently tom by the penalty of segregation. Of course, Dr. Ellis, this is a problem greater than “skin color.” This has a tremendous effect on the souls of young children who are forced by law and custom to think less of themselves than they ought to think in the North and South.

Dr. Ellis said segregation should be a fence, not a wall. On my father’s farm there were chicken wire fences with many openings. The chickens were kept in place just as if it had been a wall. The assumption behind much of this thinking is that Negroes have nothing to contribute. Furthermore, the openings to which Dr. Ellis alludes are generally one way streets or safety devices whereby the builder of the fence can keep a watchful eye on those whom he wishes to keep out. There is, as Dr. Ellis well knows as a Virginian, freedom of a white man to visit a Negro church at his discretion. But a Negro visit to a white church must be prearranged. This is not New Testament ethics, sir.

Race relations is good according to Dr. Ellis in six suburban type communities which were built with a segregated approach. Here is real subterfuge. First it is projected that the Negro contractor is right because he apparently agrees with Dr. Ellis. This in the South is called a “smart Negro.” Actually it should be clear to Dr. Ellis that race relations in such a community are not good—they are nil.

All Christian integrationists are not headed for a socialistic state. This perhaps is the greatest half-truth employed by Dr. Ellis, and borders on being malicious. For that matter all integrationists are not Christians, nor are they wrong because of that. Dr. Ellis falls prey to that which he accuses the integrationists. He becomes emotional and calls all integrationists socialists and anarchists. He omits Paul’s great contributions and his ethical demands of Christian love. Rather he puts forth Paul’s weakness and short-sightedness as biblical evidence in support of a social philosophy of separate but equal facility. Shall we take Paul at his worse or at his best? Paul and Barnabas had vital differences, but their human traits must not be the basis of our social or racial philosophy or for the premise for moral law. If Dr. Ellis would escape from the ivory towers he would find that our churches would be quite silent if the ladies did not speak. Certainly the mores of the Pauline Community cannot be used as a basis for social philosophy today.

Finally I want to say that the substitution of legislation for natural law in Western civilization, and especially in America, is working a havoc with our moral system. Originally the role of the civil law was conceived as one to interpret the will of God in the affairs of men. This was a high noble concept. The judge, the advocate and the priest were true apostles. They were “sent forth” to proclaim and elucidate the will of God. Today right and wrong are legislated. If I hate a man’s color I simply develop a plurality in the legislature against him. Therefore, I legally justify my hateful actions against him. Thus, we have witnessed on the American scene the rise of a devastating relativism in moral conduct. With this relativism nothing is clear and precise. We have become ambiguous and indefinite. Look for instance at the range of words used in this short article by Dr. Ellis … “socialism, communism, world government, integration, forced integration, modus vivendi, unity in diversity and ecclesiastical integration.” What a wide range of indefinite words, and how increased the area of ambiguity when we add to these terms their emotional connotations. Certainly if we are to clarify and put at ease the Christian conscience on the matter of race we shall have to accept the unequivocable cosmic morality of one God. His truths must not be deflected by the limited ability of men to love their brother.

Trinity Methodist Church, Bronx, N. Y.

DEED AND INTENT

The statement … of CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Sept. 16 issue) was that the ‘president of a Christian college forbade students on his campus to pray publicly for success of the meetings.’ As a matter of fact, neither the founder or the president forbade the students to have a public prayer meeting for the success of the Billy Graham campaign. Had such a request been made, we would have forbidden it because we do not believe in mocking God, and to pray for God to bless that which in His Word He positively forbids is to mock God.

President

Bob Jones University

Greenville, S.C.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY regrets that it confused intention with deed. The report was based upon a letter in which Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., chairman of the Board of Trustees of Bob Jones University, stated: “If any group of Bob Jones students wanted to have a prayer meeting to ask God to bless the evangelistic movement which Billy Graham is heading up in New York, we would not permit it. If we did permit it, it would be a repudiation of the purpose for which Bob Jones University was founded.”—ED.

- More from Daniel L. Eckert

Ideas

Will the “Y” Recover Its Gospel?

The Editors

As the YMCA moves into its second century, friends of this originally remarkable movement are hopeful that it will re-examine its mission and message for the safeguarding of a high and historic calling. They have been fearful over the past generation that the Young Men’s Christian Association has deleted from its program Christianity as a Gospel of salvation for lost sinners; and that in place of genuine spirituality, it has developed interests apart from, and even competitive to, the purpose for which it began.

It was in 1844, in the heart of London’s mercantile district, that twelve men, leaders from the Anglican Church’s evangelical wing, and from the Wesleyan and other free churches, launched the Y into operation. It was a time of social unrest. The evangelical conscience was now aggressively directed toward prison reform, education, temperance, decency in literature and art, and other vexing social problems. Yet, underlying all the energy put forward had been the presupposition of a personal faith in the redeeming work of Christ and an enthusiasm for soul-winning. John Wesley had emphasized his belief that “The gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness”; yet he had also left no doubt in mind that he was “saving sinning men, with no aim to transform them into crusaders against social sin.” It was the evangelical forces to which England came to owe its greatest debt in the struggle for social justice; the social vision remained the by-product of a desire to fulfill the objective of the Great Commission—personal soul-winning and evangelism.

Nine of the twelve founders of the mid-nineteenth century London Association had been members of free churches, the remainder being from the Church of England. Their object was to improve “the spiritual condition of young men employed in the drapery and other trades, by the introduction of religious services among them.” It was a common fact then that many of London’s retail clerks had become degraded and dissolute. And for its first year of activity, the London Association sponsored prayer meetings, Bible study, soul-winning, and weekly offerings for foreign missions. Yet Dr. L. L. Doggett, in A History of the Y.M.C.A., credits the London Association as having been “one of the chief factors in shortening the hours of labor for commercial young men.” Incited by spiritual vision, the YMCA became a promoter of social welfare through the spread of Christianity.

A chain of Associations, devoted to the Gospel of Christ, soon spread across the United States. The first was established in Boston in 1851. Montreal had formed the first YMCA in North America two months earlier. Its founders were Protestants, mostly of fervent evangelical conviction, and the associations developed into centers of Christian activity. “In those days,” said the late “Ma” Sunday, widow of Evangelist Billy Sunday, “the Y was known for its Bible more than for billiards.”

Galen M. Fisher, for many years executive of the Institute of Social and Religious Research and author of Public Affairs and the Y.M.C.A. 1844–1944, claims that “during the first fifty years of the history of the Young Men’s Christian Association, there was virtually no attention paid to what is properly called public affairs. During the second fifty years there developed, albeit slowly and unevenly, a determination by progressive leaders to arouse and equip Association members to participate in solving some of the great public questions of the day” (p. 183). He observes that the second century discloses the “growingly rooted conviction held by both lay and secretarial leaders that public affairs must be a central concern of the Associations” (p. 185).

The observation would appear cryptic. Fisher is unwittingly stating the cold fact that as an evangelical agency, the YMCA has in recent generations displaced its Christian evangel by the secular and merely social.

Fortunately, some Y Associations have still preserved their spiritual heritage and at the present time carry on supplementary programs of recreation, education and social effort in the interests of vigorous Christian witness. Perhaps the best example of this is the Association at Kannapolis, North Carolina, the largest in America, with 12,000 members. This is an exceptional example, however. In many places the spiritual tenor is at a very low ebb, and in others virtually non-existent. Some Associations have gone so far as to distort their original theological emphasis. For instance, the Cal-Tech branch of the Pasadena YMCA has for years been drifting in Unitarianism. Other Associations have become rallying places for “religious brotherhood” efforts, bringing together Protestant, Catholic and Jewish interests in such a way as to deprive Protestantism of its former missionary vitality.

The issue, of course, is not whether the YMCA ought to bristle with social concern. Rather, the problem to be faced is the manner in which that concern is to be defined and carried out. Many Association leaders today declare that faith in God and his Kingdom is the foundation of their confidence, and that business, labor, politics, race relations and international affairs can be dominated by the Spirit of Christ. But they are still suffering from the liberal Protestant illusion that the Kingdom of God can be introduced by the social melioration of unregenerate humanity. Y leaders have frequently protested against “the excessive individualism of the Protestant tradition.” This complaint has arisen, not simply from tendency of private religion to overlook the obstacles that unjust social institutions place in the path of consistent Christian living, but also out of a misplaced confidence that social evils can be conquered apart from supernatural individual regeneration. Proponents of the “social gospel,” even speakers applying evolutionary theories to moral and spiritual realities, have been featured in the past on the Y platforms. Moreover, some speakers have accorded Christian sanction to forms of Marxism which, they imply, would be acceptable if “filtered through the minds of men steeped in democratic optimism and Christian idealism.”

This anemic, if not unchristian, drift of Y interests, running alongside its program of recreational and public activities for “Christian citizenship,” represents the situation today in many of America’s most influential Associations. What it indicates is that the liberal social gospel movement still widely dominates the YMCA public affairs program.

This development has not been due to a neglect of social issues by evangelicals in the Associations. The entire Y movement had been born out of a social concern. The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody had, in days when social concern was rooted in the Gospel of Christ, raised large sums of money in his campaigns for new Association buildings. Before the turn of the century, however, lectures and panels sponsored by some of these Associations were already reflecting a shift toward independent consideration of social problems. After the turn of the century, attention focused more and more upon social ideals as divine imperatives, and local Associations were called upon to educate their memberships in terms of these objectives. In 1919 the International Convention adopted a set of “Social Ideals” which called for “subordination of … the profit motive to the … cooperative spirit,” “social planning and control of the credit and monetary systems and the economic processes for the common good,” “a wider and fairer distribution of wealth,” and other semi-socialist objectives. It is not to be denied, however, that many of the social correctives which the Associations supported pointed to definite, even urgent, areas of need. Some of its formative leaders in past decades have been of socialistic temper, however. Others have represented “world church” ecumenical attitudes and even tend to speak of the Y as a form of ecclesia.

The vast membership of the Y today represents a strategic global constituency. Centennial statistics show that the YMCA now has more than 2,000,000 world members, over 8,500 Associations, with some 6,000 secretaries. The United States alone has 1,800 Associations and 3,700 secretaries, which account for three-fourths of the world membership.

It may appear ironic to say that the Young Men’s Christian Association today stands as a vast mission field with infinite, significant Christian potential. Its concern for human welfare has given it a unique role to play in American communities. And as it moves into the second century of its life, many of its supporters hope that it will reflect upon its Christian heritage and effectively find its social interests to the Gospel of personal redemption.

At the 1955 Centennial Conference in Paris, Alfred Hirs of Zurich, who has demonstrated a wide evangelical witness on the International Committee, reminded the opening session of a consecration which young delegates had made one hundred years previous: “Each one carried away in his heart a new vision of the Master’s cause, a stronger determination to serve the Lord more faithfully; each one left Paris with the conviction that the All Powerful would stretch out his hand upon this new undertaking.”

At that Paris conference on August 22, 1855, delegates from Europe and America laid the evangelical basis for the future admission of all new Associations: “The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who, regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour according to the Holy Scriptures, desire to be his disciples in their faith and in their life, and to associate their efforts for the extension of his Kingdom among men.”

This was the beginning of the YMCA venture, worthy indeed of survival for Christian service.

Once A Bible Land, Syria Can Trigger War

It is sometimes difficult to interpret God’s mysterious hand in history, and even more difficult for us to understand the relation of immediate events to his ultimate plan. At the same time we should always confess that the sovereign God watches over men and nations and that all are subject to his judgment.

One of the most startling events in the history of the Christian Church took place outside the walls of Damascus. The Apostle Paul went out from that experience with a divine commission which made him a mighty power down to the present day.

This same Damascus is now one of the danger centers of the world. At the helm of the government of Syria are men who, wittingly or unwittingly, can trigger what could become World War III.

The disciples were first called Christians in Syrian Antioch. From that church there went out missionaries who, in their generation, turned the world upside down.

Strange that during these recent weeks this same city and area should now be occupied by Egyptian soldiers, as a gesture of defiance to the West and as a token of the would-be solidarity of the Arab world.

Paul’s missionary journeys were largely in the area now covered by Turkey. The witness of those early churches has largely disappeared. The cities in which were located the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation no longer have such churches; the total Protestant population of all of Turkey today is probably less than 150.

But today we find Turkey and Israel the dominant military powers in the Middle East. Both are able and willing to impose their own will on all of that area. Only America and Russia restrain these nations or make them hesitate to take action.

What is the significance of all of these events? None of us can say. But of this we can be sure: the God of history is overruling in the affairs of men and nations and his own holy will shall certainly prevail. One of the dramatic turns of history is that the Bible lands of antiquity so much dominate the headlines of the world. But the God of Bible history holds the destinies of nations in his hands.

In the face of the kaleidoscopic changes in the world situation, the modern man is holding his breath, not only at scientific developments which stagger the imagination but also because men themselves seem unable to exercise moral control over the forces they have now generated.

Precisely at this point the Christian and the Church has comfort and hope to offer. We know the Christ of history and the Christ of Calvary and they are the same. We also know that the future is in his hand. As he yearned over Jerusalem in the days of his flesh, so he yearns for the sinning world of our generation and offers peace and redemption to those who hear his call.

The Church is the repository of this glorious Gospel. God forbid that we should neglect it for another.

- More from The Editors

Theology

Assets or Liabilities?

L. Nelson Bell

Assets Or Liabilities?

The average Christian is a layman (and I use the term to include all church members other than the clergy). The ratio to the clergy is approximately 300 to 1, and while it is the latter which are usually quoted in the papers and who unquestionably exercise the greatest influence in ecclesiastical circles, so far as the world is concerned the Church is what the average Christian is.

We laymen therefore carry tremendous responsibility, for in the world at large the influence of the Church depends on the influence of its average member. It is the ordinary Christian who runs the home, does the shopping, teaches school, operates the businesses of our country and engages in the professions.

As one layman, writing to other laymen, let us consider just what Christ expects of us as his representatives. It is a sobering thought that people outside the Church judge Christ and Christianity, not by the Bible, not by church pronouncements, not even by the occasional fragmentary reports of sermons they may read in the paper. Rather, if they form any opinion at all, it usually is from the sudden impact or day-by-day influence of some man or woman who demonstrates in the contacts of daily living that there is a different quality of life and attitude in those in whom Christ is Lord and Saviour.

While the Apostle Paul affirms that it has pleased God to save men through the “foolishness of preaching,” he tells the same Corinthian Christians that they are letters written in the heart, letters which are known and read of all men.

Our Lord admonished his disciples to let their light shine before men for the express purpose of glorifying Him, and this admonition holds good today to all who bear the name Christian.

One of the difficulties in the Church today is the ever-recurring attempt to make non-Christians act like Christians. Because of this we have many people wearing the uniform and repeating a set of Christian shibboleths when they actually belong to the camp of the enemy and speak a different language.

I believe that if the average minister were asked what he feels is more important, more church members or more Christians who live as Christians, he would unquestionably say the latter. This is therefore written to that great company of believers, men and women who believe in Christ as the Son of God, trust in him for salvation and who honestly want him to be the Lord of life.

Just what is expected of us? How should we live? How can we do the things that our Lord expects of us?

A Christian is a redeemed person, one who has been transformed by the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ. He is living in the world but maintains citizenship in heaven. The very fact of this new citizenship entails on its holder a grave responsibility here and now, for the Christian should be the best citizen of the country in which he lives.

Christians are as salt in the society of which they are a part and as such should exhibit the properties of salt, among which are preservation and savor or sweetness. The social order outwardly may have a semblance of order and stability through the exercise of law and force, but true stability comes from the character of those who make up that order. Christian character is the salt which produces those qualities of society that preserve it and make it worth preserving. This “salt” may find its expression in what is spoken of as Christian influence, or it may assume the role of direct action.

Not only must a Christian be salt but he is also light, not a light of human origin or attainment but the reflected light of the living Christ who should shine in and from our lives. Without light man cannot live. By the presence of light man can orient himself and see the way in which he should walk. Light reveals grime and dirt, it cleanses and purifies, and it brings joy and hope to those who have been in darkness. Little wonder that our Lord told his disciples that one of their functions was that of light in the world.

A Christian is also a witness. Christianity has been spread by those who have heard and accepted the good news and then passed it on to others. We would not be Christians today but for the fact that some before us were faithful as witnesses. When our Lord went back to heaven he did not leave a great organization, nor did he ordain that the Church should exercise political or other worldly methods. Rather he left a set of historical facts and a divine revelation of their significance and committed these to a small group of men who, under the inspiration of and by the power of the Holy Spirit, went about telling others what had happened and why.

Today we Christians have the same task. It is our duty to tell other people about Christ, who he is and what he did, and it is also our duty to share in helping others tell about him. Missions both here and abroad would be an impossible task but for men and women who pay the bills while others go out to tell the story.

Christians are also followers. One of the weaknesses of some has been an intellectual acceptance of Christ as Saviour and an accompanying delight in promised happiness in heaven, without an accompanying realization that Christ must be made the Lord of our daily lives. This means following him, and the course may not be always pleasant, nor the immediate objective something attractive.

Being a follower of Christ is a matter of reflecting his glory, and we show this only as his presence shines from within our lives. This involves surrender to him, whereby the Holy Spirit takes possession and we become the channels through which he would reach men.

The outstanding characteristic of one who would live as a Christian is summed up in one word—love. We are not speaking of a pallid negativism which interprets Christ in terms of taboos, nor are we speaking of a “satanic sweetness” which may be a mask for a perverted and self-centered egotism. The love which should characterize the Christian is described in detail in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Later in this same book Paul enjoins that everything we do shall be based on and proceed from love. This is a quality of character no man has from within himself, but rather a fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is a quality by which our lives commend the Gospel we profess and which must be received and cultivated.

If Christians are to so live in the world there is an inescapable source of strength which must be tapped daily. The daily study of the Bible is as essential to spiritual life as food is to the body. Prayer, a talking with and listening to God, is as necessary for the Christian as breathing is to human existence. Witnessing and living for Christ are as important for believers as is exercise for bodily strength. Make full use of them and we become the salt and light the world desperately needs.

L. NELSON BELL

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