The Book of Revelation is undoubtedly the most mysterious and at the same time the most intriguing part of the New Testament. Its open affirmation that it deals with future events, its weird symbolism of seals, trumpets, bowls, thunders and lightnings, beasts, and angels, its strange and sometimes almost incoherent expressions have frightened some from giving it the attention it deserves. For many readers it is either a frustrating puzzle or else the happy hunting ground of fanatics. Concluding that they can find in it nothing relevant to their spiritual welfare, they avoid it completely.

Its History

Since the earliest days of the Christian era Revelation has been under discussion. It was known and circulated in the Church in the first half of the second century. Justin Martyr (c. 145) used it, and ascribed it to John, one of the apostles of Christ. Melito, Bishop of Sardis in 170, wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse. Theophilus of Antioch (c. 175) quoted from it, and Irenaeus (c. 170) in no less than five passages alluded to it and asserted that it was written by the John who leaned on Jesus’ breast at the last supper. Clement of Alexandria (c. 200), Origen (c. 250), and others concurred in accepting it as of apostolic origin and canonical.

Authorship

The authorship of Revelation was disputed first by the Alogi, a heretical sect which seems to have had no great importance, and which was probably opposed to the Apocalypse for theological reasons. A more serious objection was raised by Dionysius, an honest and competent scholar who succeeded Origen as the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria. He reasoned that John, the son of Zebedee, did not write the Apocalypse because (1) the Revelation cites the name of its author, whereas the Fourth Gospel is anonymous; (2) the concepts, vocabulary and syntax of Revelation are radically different from the Gospel; (3) the Greek of the Apocalypse is ungrammatical, whereas the Greek of the Gospel, though not always idiomatic, is generally free from errors.

Dionysius’ arguments against the Johannine authorship have persisted to the present day. Eusebius, the great church historian of the fourth century, regarded the canonical status of the Apocalypse as doubtful, though he did not reject it utterly. In recent times R. H. Charles concluded that the Fourth Gospel and Revelation are not by the same author. Many modern scholars deny the apostolic authorship of Revelation completely.

On the other hand, there are a number of words and concepts, such as “word of God” as a title of Christ, “witness,” the concept of the “Lamb,” and some others that characterize both John and the Revelation, and are common to no other writings of the New Testament. Some of the grammatical irregularities can be explained by the use of fixed titles treated as indeclinable nouns. The writer may at times have used ungrammatical expressions, but he did not do so habitually. When he violated some rule of grammar, he did so because he had a purpose in mind, not because of ignorance.

Literary Form

A deeper cause than uncertainty of authorship has prompted some to reject Revelation. It belongs to the general class of apocalyptic literature, which employs highly symbolic language and which stresses the supernatural intervention of God in the affairs of men. For this reason it has been branded as wholly fanciful and unreal, and has been dismissed simply as a piece of wishful thinking, a lurid picture of the much desired triumph of right over wrong which has not yet been literally realized, and probably never will be. Truth, however, is not made or unmade by the literary form through which it is expressed; and in this case the Apocalypse differs from the ordinary Jewish apocalyptic writing in several ways. Although it possesses the usual characteristics noted above, it is not pseudonymous. It was written to seven actual churches in seven well-known cities, and its emphasis on practical ethics is different from the general trend of apocalyptic works.

Author

Internal evidence concerning the author shows that his name was John, and that he was a familiar figure among the churches of Asia to whom the Apocalypse was first sent. He calls himself their brother (Rev. 1:9). He had lived among them long enough to share in the persecutions and trials which they had endured for Christ. At the time of writing Revelation he was in the island of Patmos, probably as a prisoner of the Emperor. While immured there, he saw the visions of which the book speaks, and he committed them to parchment.

Date

Various dates of writing have been proposed, but the best choice seems to be about A. D. 95, near the close of the reign of Domitian. Irenaeus, Victorinus, Eusebius and Jerome all agree that it was written at that time, and the internal evidence tends to support their testimony. The fact that several of the Asian churches had backslidden demands time enough for their rise and fall. If they were founded in the active ministry of Paul, between A. D. 50 and 60, it is doubtful if the Revelation could have been written as early as the reign of Nero in A. D. 65. By Domitian’s time a second generation would have arisen concerning whom the charges of having left their first love and of harboring false teachers, or of having grown self-satisfied and lukewarm, would be more easily true. It probably marks the beginning of outward tension between the Church and the empire which eventuated in the persecution of the second and third centuries.

Interpretation

The interpretations of Revelation have been almost as numerous as its expositors. Generally they may be divided into four classes: the futurists, who regard all of Revelation beyond the third chapter as future, belonging to the period immediately preceding the advent of Christ; the historicists, who interpret the sequence of seals, trumpets, and bowls as depicting the entire course of history from the close of the apostolic age until the end of time; the preterists, who interpret Revelation as a figurative representation of the conflict between the Church and the empire at the end of the first century; and the idealists, who divest the prophecy of any chronological significance, and who make it simply a symbolic picture of the eternal conflict of the righteousness of God and the machinations of Satan.

While not all of these interpretations can be final, there is a measure of truth in each of them. The futurist can claim rightly that “the things which must be hereafter” (4:1) apply to the future, or, at least, to the future of the writer. The historicist has the advantage of continuity in interpretation, rather than assigning the bulk of the book to one narrow period in the remote future. The preterist recognizes the relevance of Revelation to the day in which it was written, and attempts to show how the symbols and thought are rooted in the history and vocabulary of the first century. The idealist tries to maintain the spiritual emphasis of the book with its theological and ethical teachings, rather than to lose himself in a maze of inexplicable details.

Structure And Content

The best approach to Revelation, however, is through its internal structure. If the book were to have any meaning for the churches to whom it was first addressed, it must have been sufficiently plain for them to comprehend its main message, even though details would have to be studied and absorbed gradually. How would they have understood it?

Revelation can be divided naturally into six main sections. The first of these, the Prologue (T. 1–8) contains the introductory details. It is organized like the title page of a book. The title, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” announces the subject. The book is primarily concerned with the person of Christ as he relates himself to the events of the future. The method of impartation of this revelation is indicated by the word “signified,” which means literally to declare by symbols, or to respond as an oracle would to an inquirer in enigmatic language. The word is used three times in the Gospel of John about Jesus’ death (12:33, 18:32, 21:19), and in each instance it means the figurative statement of a predicted fact. In the introduction to Revelation it conveys the idea that the content of the book will be symbolic, and that it will deal with realities.

The name of the author is the next item on the title page, coupled with the statement that he “bare record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw” (1:2). The language is that of the Fourth Gospel, and one cannot avoid the feeling that the writer sought to identify himself by his previous work, which was presumably known to the churches of Asia. He acted as the messenger of Christ, and he claimed only subordinate authority (22:10). Nevertheless he expected that the words of his book would be heard and obeyed as the very message of God.

The destination was the seven churches of Asia. Just why these seven should have been selected is not stated. There were more than seven churches in Asia by the end of the first century. Perhaps these were chosen because they were representative of different types which existed then, and which collectively make a picture of the churches of the entire age to follow.

The greeting from the Triune God, the eternal Father, the sevenfold Spirit, and the redeeming Son, sets the doctrinal tone of the book. Redemption is stressed in Christ’s character, “the faithful witness, the firstbegotten of the dead, the prince of the kings of the earth”; in Christ’s work, “he loved us … loosed us … made us”; and in Christ’s prospect, “Behold, he cometh with clouds.…” The seventh verse declares unmistakably that the theme of Revelation will be Christ’s return, which will complete and crown his redemptive work for men.

The eighth verse, the last of the Introduction, is like the publisher’s name on the title page. It declares God’s approval of the work and his responsibility for it.

The main body of the book is divided into four visions, each of which is introduced by the phrase, “… in the Spirit” (1:10, 4:2, 17:3, 21:10). “In the Spirit” does not mean “a spiritual attitude,” but rather refers to the control of the Holy Spirit over the mind and person of the author so that he was transported in mystic fashion to the surroundings which he describes. The first states that he was “in the island that is called Patmos” (1:9), a definite geographical location; the second, that he was called up to heaven where he saw a throne set (4:1, 2); the third, that he was removed to “a wilderness” (17:3); and the fourth, that he was placed in “a mountain great and high” 21:10).

The four divisions consist of two balanced pairs. Each member of the first pair is introduced by “a great voice” (1:10, 4:1), and each member of the second pair by “one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls” (17:1, 21:9). These contrast the divine discipline of the churches and the judgments on the world. The second couple contrasts the fall of Babylon, representing the spiritual organization of godless civilization and the ultimate perfection of the Bride, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the perfected community of the redeemed.

Furthermore, each of the divisions in Revelation marks some aspect of the character of Christ as he brings redemption to perfection. Perhaps this can he stated best in a brief outline:

Prologue: Christ Communicating 1:1–8

Vision I: Christ in the Church 1:9–3:22

Vision II: Christ in the Cosmos 4:1–16:21

Vision III: Christ in Conquest 17:1–21:8

Vision IV: Christ in Consummation 21:9–22:5

Epilogue: Christ Challenging 22:6–21

The progress of the outline is evident in the text. As already noted, the Prologue states that the entire book will be occupied with the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him to communicate to his servants. This revelation carries the work of redemption into the future, and purports to show what the final scope and effect of salvation will be. Grounded in the pivotal events of Christ’s death and resurrection, the purpose of God will be carried forward in the process of human history until evil is overcome and the Kingdom shall be finally established. So certain is this outcome that the Prologue states the fact as past: “he made us to be a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father …” (1:6, ARV).

The first vision opens with a portrait of Christ clothed in priestly garments, moving among his churches on a tour of inspection. Their weaknesses and their virtues are typical of the Church of all ages. Reproof and commendation are given to all in proportion to their respective merits. It is noteworthy that the future advent of the Lord which seems indefinite in the letter to Ephesus, “… or else I come to thee” (2:5, ARV), is in the letter to Laodicea an imminent fact, “… Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (3:20). The first message of the book is to the Church, for “judgment must begin at the house of God.”

The second vision deals with the world-process of judgment, administered by God’s delegated agent. Two symbolic words dominate the thought of this section. The vision is set in heaven, but the focus of attention is not fixed on the surroundings but on the throne, in relation to which all other figures are located and from which proceeds the action of judgment. In this way the sovereignty of God over the affairs of the world is asserted. The deputy of this sovereignty is “a Lamb as it had been slain,” who takes from the right hand of the Occupant of the throne the seven-sealed scroll which gives him the authority to exercise judgment upon the earth. “Lamb” emphasizes the sacrificial aspect of Christ. He is the enduring Atonement for sin upon whom the divine judgment has already fallen, and because he has made Atonement he is capable of bringing the final victory over evil.

The entire section that follows is given over to cataclysmic judgments through which the people of God are miraculously preserved, and by which the culminating organization of evil—political, social, economic, and religious—under the domination of the “Beast,” is finally crushed. Revelation presents the current world process as a titanic struggle of supernatural forces in which human governments, societies and religions are involved, and which will eventuate in a climactic rebellion against God, terminated by the advent of Christ in judgment.

The final aspect of this judgment which is the climax of redemption is told in the two remaining visions. Christ in Conquest (17:3–21:8) reveals the Word of God on the white horse, judging and making war in righteousness. The fall of Babylon, the city in which organized wickedness reaches its fullest manifestation, the destruction of the beast and his armies who have rebelled against God, the imprisonment of Satan for a thousand years, his release and final doom, the millennial reign of Christ, and the introduction of the city of God fulfil the purpose of redemption.

In contrast to this vision of the overthrow of evil, the last vision (21:9–22:5) reveals Christ in Consummation, the everlasting joy of his redeemed people. The term “Lamb” is reintroduced, evidently as a reminder that redemption will be the basis for the eternal state and its chief delight. The city of God, with streets of gold and gates of pearl, may be figurative; but if so, the language is an attempt to describe the indescribable—God’s ultimate destiny for his people. Seven negations contrast this city with the cities of men as they were known in the ancient world: (1) no temple, (2) no sun or moon, (3) no closed gates, (4) no uncleanness, (5) no curse, (6) no night, (7) no artificial light. In contrast to each of these points the Lamb supplies a true worship, a true light, an open welcome, a holy populace, the blessing of his presence, and the eternal illumination of the presence of deity. The New Jerusalem will restore to the saved all the blessings that man lost by his sin in Eden.

The Epilogue (22:6–21) focuses the theme of the book in one climactic appeal. The threefold repetition of the theme, “I come quickly,” with its accompanying exhortations, challenge the will to obey, the moral nature to prepare for Christ’s coming, and the emotional desire to see the Lord. It makes all the preceding text the practical foundation for an attitude of readiness and alertness in view of Christ’s promised return.

Tools For Study

Commentaries and expositions of Revelation are almost numberless. The most complete critical work on the Greek text are the two volumes on Revelation by R. H. Charles in the International Critical Commentary. Charles was the most learned scholar of recent times in the field of apocalyptic literature, but his literary criticism was radical. Swete’s commentary is not quite so exhaustive as Charles’, but it is thorough. William Lee’s commentary on Revelation in The Bible Commentary is helpful to the student who wants discussion of detail. The earliest and the most popular of the premillennial futurist commentaries is J. A. Seiss’ Lectures on the Apocalypse. A more recent volume in the same category is Wm. R. Newell’s verse-by-verse exposition. Milligan’s treatment of Revelation in Schaff’s Popular Commentary on the New Testament is both scholarly and practical. The most recent general conservative commentary is The New Bible Commentary by Davidson, Stibbs and Kevan. Its discussion of Revelation is necessarily brief, but it is up to date. Sir William Ramsay’s Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia contains a wealth of material by an expert archaeologist on the historical setting of Revelation. It is hard to say which is the best commentary on Revelation, since each one has a different approach, and since many may excel in different ways.

There is no easy road to an understanding of Revelation, but prayerful acceptance of what one does understand, with equally prayerful meditation on what one does not understand, will bring a growing appreciation of this book which after all has the same theme as the rest of the New Testament—the person of Christ.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

• The procedure followed in the above article is developed much more fully in Dr. Tenney’s recent volume, Interpreting Revelation.—ED.

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The Triennial General Assembly of the National Council of Churches of Christ met in St. Louis the first week in December to review and appraise the work carried on by the staff and General Board. Some two thousand delegates were divided into 21 groups to consider 75 programs carried on by the Council. They listened to 22 major speakers in addition to reports of staff members.

Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, pastor of Delmar Baptist Church, St. Louis, was unanimously elected president of the Council and will hold office for three years. The congregation of which he is the pastor belongs both to the American Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Faith In Man

The former president of the Council, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, gave the opening keynote message by calling the delegates to a new faith of man in man. He said, “Of all the failures and weaknesses of the Christian Church, there is none today more costly to our cause than lack of faith in one another.” In regard to the political aspect, Dr. Blake said, “The free world faces a true crisis in that it will be as dangerous to continue 100 per cent skepticism of totalitarian communism as it would be to believe all the protestations of peaceful intentions that come from the Kremlin.” His greatest concern, however, was with the distrust that existed among the churches composing the National Council of Churches. Variety of faith and differences of opinion were welcome since uniformity and monolithic structure would be the death of the NCC. That faith and trust in man had a limited character was revealed the following day in Dr. Blake’s address on the “State of the National Council.” He maintained there was more confidence in the NCC being a council of churches since it was evident that the Council was not the instrument of the controversial Lay Committee or Liberal “Ecumaniacs.”

Issue Of Segregation

No issue stirred the Assembly more than the sore problem of segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King deplored the use of physical violence. He said, “The alternative to violence is the method of non-violent resistance. This method is nothing more and nothing less than Christianity in action. It seems to me to be the Christian way of life in solving problems of human relations. This method was made famous in our generation by Mohandas K. Ghandi, who used it to free his country from the domination of the British Empire. This method has also been used in Montgomery, Alabama, under the leadership of the ministers of all denominations, to free 50,000 Negroes from the long night of bus segregation.” He further declared, “We must say to our white brothers over the South that we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will match your physical force with our soul force. We will not hate you and yet we cannot obey your evil laws. Do to us what you will, and we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer and in earning our freedom we will so appeal so your hearts and consciences that we will win you in the process.”

Col. Francis Pickens Miller of Virginia pointed out that the two races in his state are drifting apart with growing mistrust of each other. He said, “While legal segregation is on its way out, a new and in some respects even more distressing form of segregation is rushing in to take its place—segregation of the mind, of the spirit and of the heart. And this new form of voluntary segregation is not unilateral—it is bilateral. I am reminded of the seven devils that came to occupy the house after one had been cast out.”

The Church was pointed out as probably the most racially segregated major institution in American life. Dr. Liston Pope, dean of Yale Divinity School, declared that “the churches have lagged behind the Supreme Court as the conscience of the people on questions of race, and they have fallen far behind trade unions, factories, schools, department stores, athletic gatherings and most other major areas of human association as far as achievement of integration in their own life is concerned.”

The Assembly reaffirmed its renunciation of the pattern of racial segregation, both in the churches and in society as a violation of the Gospel of love and human brotherhood. In light of the refusal of some taxies in St. Louis to convey Negroes it resolved that future meetings of the General Assembly would take place in such communities “where the prevailing practice in restaurants, transportation and all other public facilities, is service to all people without regard to race or color.”

Nature Of Unity

Dissatisfaction with denominational divisions appeared in many speeches. The Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, stated, “I cannot believe that the present condition represents the mind of God.” He pointed out that when problems of church unity are discussed there must be a fearless facing of the truth. Bishop Sherrill said, “There are diversities of gifts, of course, but the purpose of Christ cannot embrace contradictory, even competing ideas and aims. Truth may have various manifestations, but essentially, truth is one. There is a unity in the mind of God. Our present unity, such as it is, stands only as a symbol of what can and should be.”

A strong stand for organic union was made by the Rt. Rev. Rajah B. Manikam, Bishop of the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India. “Cooperation in itself was not and is not enough,” he said. He admitted that union did not always result in greater missionary activity. The Bishop stated, “It is not to be denied that United Churches have not become far more missionary-minded after the union than before. Union has not always begotten Mission.” He insisted that union cannot be achieved if the negotiating parties insist on settling every disagreement in doctrine, theology and polity. Bishop Manikam concluded, “the churches in the States and their missionary societies would do well not to put any impediment in the way of the young churches desiring to unite with one another. They should select and send to the East such men and women missionaries as will not look at each other critically over denominational walls, nor desire to perpetuate those historic divisions which, whatever they may mean to the West, have far less relevance in the Eastern context. They should do all they can to further ecumenical missions wherever possible, and in turn seek to unite with other churches in their own homelands.”

Conciliar Movement

What promised to be a controversial amendment in regard to increased representation of local, city and state councils was deferred to a future Assembly. This amendment previously received 40–27 endorsement by the General Board. Promised opposition by Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of the United Lutheran Church undoubtedly caused the postponement of the amendment. He had previously pointed out that the passing of the amendment would cause the NCC to lose its character of being a council of churches. At present the General Board has 54 per cent representation on the part of constituent denominations. The passing of the amendment would drop this to 50 per cent representation.

In a major address, Dr. Truman B. Douglass of New York City made a strong plea that more authority be granted to local, state and national councils. Dr. Douglass maintained that in some aspects councils embody more fully the Church of Christ than denominations. He declared, “There is a Church of Christ which transcends all the churches. This true Church is never perfectly embodied in any of our existing churches, nor will it ever be so long as we continue in our present divisions and in separation from one another. The councils of churches embody some aspects of the Church in its fullness which are not made manifest in the churches.” Concerning the NCC he voiced the opinion, “that at a number of crucial points its witness is more faithful and more nearly adequate than that of the member denominations.” He further maintained that the NCC has a kind of authority over the churches and, “When the Council mediates the judgment of the Church upon the churches, as it surely does concerning their disunity, it becomes the Church in one of its modes.”

Nuclear-Space Age

The Russian Sputniks succeeded not only in causing nations to gaze into the stratosphere and work feverishly to defend their plot upon earth, but also caused church leaders to gaze into the heaven of heavens and work feverishly to defend spiritual and moral values against encroachment of a scientific materialistic concept of life. Woven through many of the main addresses at the Assembly was a grave fear that the nations might fall prey to Russian atheistic materialism. This was expressed by Dr. Roswell P. Barnes, “ ‘Greece captured took Rome captive.’ More than once history has witnessed the irony of a people unconsciously and unintentionally assuming the cultural characteristics of the nation it has defeated in a contest of power. As a nation we could establish technological superiority and succumb to the very materialistic dialectic which we abhor.”

Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, a Philadelphia Lutheran, charged that Americans were acting like spiritual adolescents at a time of scientific maturity and called attention to “the stupidity of corporate humanity.” He said, “We are in danger of falling into the trap of those who by their own profession are atheistic materialists. God have mercy on the children of men if the two giant powers of the world, in deed if not in word, recognized as their only governor dialectical materialism.” Charles Parlin, New York attorney, found some elements of hope in Russian scientific advance. He said, “In the progress of communist technology, now being so dramatically advertised to an apprehensive world, are factors of hope. There was search for truth and accuracy. There was vision and imagination. There was bravery of concept and daring in execution. Here are virtues where our peoples meet in common respect. It gives substance to the hope of the Russian churches that their country can some day be restored to the family of Christian nations.” But, alas, as the apostle Paul pointed out long ago, the world by wisdom knew not God. The study of natural revelation can never make a nation Christian.

The General Assembly adopted a document that stated the crisis was fundamentally moral and spiritual. For a solution it stated, “efforts must be redoubled to realize the final goal of world-wide disarmament in the framework of the United Nations.” The document was chiefly a call to the nation “to demonstrate the values of our society in economics, political procedures, and human values.… to take new diplomatic initiative.… to give increased moral and spiritual leadership to the world.… to build international understanding and good will.” The churches were called upon to shape public opinion and to urge all men to repentance and faith in God.

Miscellaneous

Four church bodies with a total of 478,000 members were voted into the National Council. They are the Armenian Apostolic Church of North America, the Polish National Catholic Church of America, the Free Magyar Reformed Church in America, and the Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese. This brings to 34 the number of constituent communions within the NCC.

Six million copies of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible have been sold since it was published a little more than five years ago, it was announced by Dr. Luther A. Weigle. This version headed the list of nonfiction best sellers in 1952, 1953 and 1954.

Concerning corruption in the labor movement the Assembly stated, “We believe the labor unions are responsible for the situation that has been revealed; but so is management; so also is the Christian Church. The degree and kind of responsibility may differ but we all share in the responsibility.”

Freedom of association was upheld. Churches and churchmen were urged to recognize the gravity of the threat to all associations and to all liberties when the freedom of any legitimate voluntary association is assailed.

The Assembly urged the government to revise “the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to eliminate discrimination based on race, color and sex, revise the national origins quota system and provide more adequately for the admission of relatives, and of refugees.” Concern that moral issues “be clearly set forth” in connection with the retention or return of alien properties in the United States seized during World War II was expressed in a resolution.

The Assembly declared that technical and economic aid “should not be primarily for political and military association but for the purpose of helping people to help meet economic and social needs and opportunities.… Oneness in Christ across the nations requires mutual aid and trade.”

The Council voted to hold its fifth general assembly at San Francisco in the summer of 1961. This date was set in order to avoid conflict with the general assembly of the World Council of Churches scheduled to meet in December of 1960.

J. MARCELLUS KIK

People: Words And Events

Sunday Home Showings—The Denver Board of Realtors has voted to end the open-house showing of homes on Sunday. Said many salesmen, “Thank goodness we can finally get to church on Sunday.” One Denver realtor, Max Moore, said, “We plan to run pictures of churches in the Sunday paper, saying, ‘This is our open house today.’ ”

Better Films—The best way to raise the moral standards of movies is for top actors and actresses to improve scripts through their story acceptance clauses, says entertainer Bob Crosby. The stars will listen, he said, if enough people insist on better movies. “If the performer realizes he is losing his box office, he would be pretty stupid to continue that type of show,” Crosby said.

Service to Humanity—Evangelist Billy Graham, Mrs. Clare Booth Luce, former U. S. Ambassador to Italy, and Gen. Alfred Gruenther, president of the Red Cross, have been cited for their “distinguished service to humanity” by the National Institute of Social Sciences. President Eisenhower praised the medal winners as “symbols of the diversified power of our nation.”

101st Birthday—Dr. Arthur J. Brown, secretary emeritus of the Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., celebrated his 101st birthday recently at a small New York dinner party. During the same week the vigorous ex-missionary served in his usual active role as senior elector to New York University’s Hall of Fame.

Fourth Century Church—Discovery of the oldest Christian church ever excavated in Israel has been announced by the Israeli Antiquities Department. The church was uncovered in the village of Shavei Zion on the Mediterranean coast. An inscription on one of its stones sets the date of construction of the basilica-type church during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great in the fourth century.

Religious Liberty Stamp—A three-cent stamp honoring religious liberty, to be released by the Post Office Dec. 27, has the Bible as its central design. The stamp will commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance—a protest by citizens of Flushing, N. Y., against an edict banning Quakers by Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant.

Protestant Pastor Sentenced—Pastor Siegfried Schmutzler, 42-year-old chaplain to Evangelical students at Leipzig University, has been sentenced to five years of hard labor by the district court in East Berlin on charges of counter-revolutionary activities. Lutheran Bishop Hanns Lilje denounced the sentence as the newest “grave assault” in a concentrated campaign by the communists against the evangelical churches in the Soviet zone. Student groups also protested.

The Last Issue—Our Hope magazine, founded 63½ years ago by Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein and continued monthly without interruption for 772 issues, stops publication with the December issue, Dr. Frank E. Gaebelein, publisher and son of the founder, announced. The magazine, which is merging with Eternity beginning in January, has constantly stressed the exposition of the Scriptures, especially in relation to premillennial and prophetic exposition.

Digest—Dr. F. Townley Lord, London minister and former president of the Baptist World Alliance, has accepted a position on the faculty of Furman University, Greenville, S. C.… Dr. John A. Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, is on a trip to Hungary and Ghana.… The goal of $4,000,000 for a new Methodist theological seminary near Delaware, Ohio, has been reached, Bishop Hazen G. Werner of Columbus announced.… Finland and Norway are expected to bid for the Fourth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in 1962.… Dr. Fred C. Wiegman, 58, died in a December automobile accident, four months after he assumed the presidency of the Ohio Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America. He was the fifth president of a ULCA synod to die in the last 14 months.

Rejected Again

For the second time in two years, congregations of the Lutheran Free Church have rejected a proposal to merge with three other Lutheran denominations.

The proposal was defeated by only 17 votes. Of the 1,156 ballots cast by 342 congregations 754, or 65.22 per cent, were in favor of resuming union negotiations and 402, or 34.78 per cent were opposed. A two-thirds majority was necessary for approval.

Involved in the merger are the Evangelical, American and United Evangelical Lutheran churches scheduled to form the American Lutheran Church in 1960.

Broad Range

A statement on world problems ranging all the way from the Middle East to outer space was adopted by The Methodist Church’s Board of World Peace at its annual meeting in Cleveland, Ohio.

On the Middle East crisis, the board declared: “The United States can accomplish more for peace and democracy in the Middle East by sponsoring bold solutions to its economic and social problems under the United Nations than by sending arms to unstable or feudalistic governments.”

On the question of rights to outer space, the board urged the UN General Assembly “to declare the title of the international community and to establish appropriate administrative arrangements.”

Crumbs From Table

The mainstream of theology in America today is closer to evangelical Christianity than at any time in history, a Minnesota educator told the eighth annual conference of Lutheran foreign students at Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Edgar Carlson, president of Gustave Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minn., told the seminary students that theology has its own domain today.

“There was a time when the theologian lived off the crumbs from the table of the psychologist, the philosopher and the sociologist,” he said. “But developments in biblical theology have been so decisive that theology is recognized as having a definite field of its own.”

Worth Quoting

“When I first came to the (Catholic) University (of America) as a student 40 years ago, there were 17 million Catholics in America. I found a University only 28 years old and comparatively small.… Today the Catholics of America have doubled in number to 34 million and our Alma Mater has developed correspondingly.… If now we were to look forward another 40 years, it will bring us to the end of the century. The Catholic population will, no doubt, have doubled to at least 70 million people.”—The Most Rev. Bryan J. McEntegart, Bishop of Brooklyn and former rector of the Catholic University of America.

“This is no time for Americans to be proud, snooty and unsympathetic. What free-world peoples want from us today is companionship in their sufferings, not cocktails in their socials.”—Dr. Caradine R. Hooton, General Secretary, Methodist Board of Temperance.

A Christmas Gift

Children out at our house were living in a popeyed wonderland of wants as Christmas made its jolly approach last December.

The wants ranged from a “twactor, twain and twuck with all the twimmings,” to a bicycle and grown-up dolls. As the postal bombardment of Santa Claus continued without let-up, the “littlest angel” with grubby hands was finding such constant tension too hard for him.

Much like the boy ordered to the bathroom by his mother to wash his hands, he splashed some water over the dirt, only to be sent back with the admonition, “Wash off all those germs.” Returning to the gruesome task, he muttered, “All I ever hear about around here is God, Santa Claus and germs, and I can’t see any one of them.”

Something different was needed to get the spirit of Christmas into its true perspective. The woes of wanting had to be changed into the joy of giving. An ideal solution presented itself when the family discussed the situation during devotions and decided to sponsor a Korean orphan.

Selection of the child was left to World Vision, Inc., an American organization that cares for more than 9,000 orphans in the Far East. Dr. Bob Pierce, president, founded the work and has spearheaded its growth.

A short while later the child’s picture arrived in the mail. Her name was Moo Hee and she was a beautiful two-year-old resident of the Sung Lac Babies’ Home in Taegu. World Vision said, “We don’t know anything about Moo Hee’s parents. She was brought to this home by police women.” Other babies have been found in ditches and garbage dumps. Some parents have brought children to the police with this request, “If you can’t find a home, then kill it.”

The cost of sponsoring an orphan is $10 per month, and the entire amount is sent to Korea by World Vision.

In order to make the project a family affair in which every member had a stake, jobs were assigned and the pay scale set. Each contributed monthly to the support of Moo Hee.

With other savings, the children sent gifts to their new “sister” and wrote letters telling her about life in America. They received letters from her nurse, written in Korean and translated by the World Vision staff.

Without fail, since the beginning, the children have prayed each night for the little girl halfway around the world. Before that, the prayers had been of the “God bless me” variety. Now their treasure was going to another and their hearts were there also.

I visited Korea recently to prepare a special series of newspaper articles, but had received definite orders from the children: “Go see Moo Hee if you have to miss everything else.” And they purchased clothing for me to deliver.

Having learned well the chain of command during four years in the Navy, I did as directed—gladly. Sung Lac was clean and looked comfortable, a sharp contrast with the surrounding area. The home was filled with children.

The nurse patted an adorable little girl on the head and said, “This is Moo Hee.” She didn’t quite know what to make of the big American who picked her up and let him know it in the only way she knew—with a flood of tears. The clothing he had brought was far too big, but the children had thoughtfully bought a doll that was a perfect fit.

She sat on the floor with the doll and didn’t utter another peep. As I sat there with her, I marveled at the way in which God had worked. Moo Hee had done far more for my family than we would ever be able to do for her.

Outside of Christ, Moo Hee had given the children out at our house the greatest Christmas gift they will ever receive.

She gave them the desire to care about others!

GEORGE BURNHAM

Wanted By Fbi

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked clergymen to be on the alert for a man who has preyed upon Protestant ministers by posing as a theological student and as a former assistant to an Air Force chaplain.

He was identified by the FBI as Paul Cline Gross, about 30, sought on charges of conditional release violator and impersonation. A number of fraudulent checks have turned up in his wake.

Gross has served time at the U. S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pa. Aliases used include Captain P. Cross, Paul Cline Cross, Cline Droce, Major Ralph Gross, Paul Clyne Gross, Clide Ross, Paul Ross, Paul Clyne Cross, Paul G. Woods, Paul Woodward and others.

A native of Knox County, Tenn., he is described as follows: Height, 6 ft. 1 in. to 6 ft. 3 in.; weight, 180 to 220 pounds; build, medium; hair, brown; eyes, blue; complexion, medium; race, white; nationality, American. He has a half-inch circular scar on the back of his left thumb and may wear horn-rimmed glasses. He is reported to be stoop-shouldered, with a hump, because of a broken back.

Gross may be armed and should be considered dangerous. Any person with information about him is requested to notify the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U. S. Department of Justice, Washington 25, D. C. or the special agent in charge of the nearest FBI Division.

Question Deadline

The Census Bureau must make a firm decision by next April 1 as to whether a religious affiliation question will be included in the 1960 census, a spokesman for the agency said.

The bureau has made no decision as yet on including the question, “What is your religion?”

Some religious groups favor such a question as a means of securing valuable statistical information. Others oppose it as a violation of the separation of Church and State.

The bureau spokesman said the April 1 deadline is made necessary by the huge printing job required to prepare the forms on which data for about 180,000,000 Americans will be recorded.

Congress will have a voice in the final decision since the bureau must clear plans for the enumeration with appropriations committees before funds for printing of the forms are approved.

These funds will be included in the budget requests which the Department of Commerce submits to Congress in January for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1959.

Far East

Praise In India

A Hindu leader in Madras has praised the humanitarian and educational work of Christian missionaries in India and branded as “unproved” and “exaggerated” charges that they use improper pressure to win converts.

Dr. A. Krishnaswamy, member of the Indian parliament, took exception to the findings published by an official commission of the Madhya Pradesh state government, which recommended that foreign missionaries engaged primarily in proselytizing be withdrawn from the country.

The commission, headed by Dr. Bhamwami Shanker Niyogi, former chief justice of the Nagpur high court, charged that missionary work was not prompted by strictly spiritual motives. It said attempts were being made to create “Christian pockets” with a view to disrupting the solidarity of the Hindu society.

Dr. Krishnaswamy said that “even if the instances mentioned in the commission’s report had been substantiated they would not have justified the commission in arriving at the conclusion that foreign missionaries pursued activities of an undesirable character.”

The Indian legislator said the Niyogi commission’s findings “provoked outspoken criticism not only from members of the Christian faith but of other faiths as well.”

“The consensus of opinion in India has been, and is,” he said, “opposed to drawing up a bill of indictment against missionaries. It was, therefore, not surprising to find responsible men belonging to different political schools of thought criticizing the Niyogi report, not only for erring in its presentation of facts but also for overstepping the bounds of propriety and national interests.”

Mayor Of Madras

Mrs. Tara Cherian, an active member of the Church of South India, has been elected mayor of Madras. She is the first woman ever named to the post.

Mrs. Cherian, 44, is connected with many welfare organizations. She has headed the advisory board of the Hospital for Women and Children in Egmore, Madras, for nearly 20 years. She also has served on the senate of Madras University.

Medical Mission

An unique mission stirred Christian and medical circles recently in Ceylon. It was undertaken by Dr. Jacob Chandy, Professor of Neurology and Superintendent of Christian Medical College, Vellore, South India. He was accompanied by Dr. Paul Brand and other doctors of the same institution.

The men of medicine came preaching rather than to treat patients, although many of the sick were seen privately. Members of the Student Christian Movement of the Medical College of the University of Ceylon invited the team to give Christian testimony, to sharpen ideas of what it means to be a Christian doctor and to give lectures on professional medical subjects.

Dr. Chandy is a noted brain surgeon and Dr. Brand has had much success in restoring hands crippled by leprosy and in equipping lepers for a useful life.

One result of the mission came when several medical students announced intentions of working in mission hospitals.

—W.R.H.

A Working Day?

Sunday as a holiday, or holy day, may be eliminated in Ceylon if a proposal of the Buddhist Religious Affairs Advisory Committee is adopted by the government.

The advisory committee has recommended to the Minister of Local Government and Cultural Affairs that weekly poya days should replace Sunday as the day off beginning Jan. 1, 1959. The poya day is determined with reference to the phases of the moon which means that full moon day, new moon day and a day one week before full moon and new moon are all poya days.

Claiming that Ceylon’s present 26 holidays hinder a vitally necessary increase in production, the committee made five proposals:

The same holidays are to apply to everyone.

Poya day and the half day preceding it should be holidays in the place of Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

In addition, there shall be 12 extraordinary holidays. These include Good Friday and Christmas but not Easter.

Hindus, Christians and Moslems shall be given the right to select any two other days on which they will be entitled to leave as a matter of right without these days being counted against their annual leave.

The privilege now given Moslems in getting short leave for religious purposes on Friday afternoons should be extended to Christians by allowing them to come an hour late to offices on Sunday.

Combining the first and fourth provisions strongly suggests that Christians and other non-Buddhists would enjoy three days of holiday each week. Since this would presumably have an anti-Buddhist tendency, such could hardly be the intention of the advisory committee. However, the matter has not yet been clarified.

It seems unlikely that this plan for eliminating the Sunday holiday will be adopted for the simple reason that the rest of the world is largely committed to the present arrangement. But the proposal indicates that strong, official forces in Ceylon are devoting thought and energy to making this country as Buddhistic in culture as possible.

—W.R.H.

THE GIFT OF GOD

Among the Christmas magazines on the newsstand, I found the cartoon cover. There was Billy Graham giving the sales pitch on a packaged mix labeled “Instant Salvation.” Dr. Ivy had described it in his luncheon talk. He regards Graham and TV commercials as a survival of the revivalists and medicine men of the frontier. Dr. Ivy is against magic, superstition, quack nostrums and panaceas. He is suspicious of all miracles except those of modern science.

When I remarked that “Instant Salvation” was hard, indeed, impossible to sell, he seemed puzzled. He admitted that he couldn’t be sold, but one cannot exaggerate the gullibility of mass man.

He is quite wrong. People are already sold on do-it-yourself salvation. It is another matter for a man to acknowledge that he can do nothing to gain salvation and to turn in penitence and faith to Christ.

“Instant Salvation” might outsell vitamins if it could be sold. But it must be given away. It is precisely impossible for the self-assured, prosperous American to enter the Kingdom as a spiritual pauper. The disciples asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus answered, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Only by a miracle does a man receive salvation on God’s terms. It was by a miracle that this salvation was given. “Nothing is impossible with God,” said the angel to Mary. When Sarah heard the promise of her son she laughed. Even Zacharias before the altar doubted. But Mary bowed in faith. “Be it unto me according to thy word.” The Spirit who wrought in her womb wrought first in her heart.

Before the impossible gospel men still laugh in unbelief—foolishness! The foolishness and weakness of God. “Be it unto me according to thy word!”

EUTYCHUS

HOPE FOR THE YMCA

Of course the YMCA’s are concerned for public affairs and Christian citizenship; that is part of their purpose. In 1893 Robert McBumey, the dynamic secretary of the great New York City Association, said, “The best thing for you and me is to engage in earnest Christian work for the bodies and souls of men …” Theologically-minded critics of the YMCA must remember that it is a lay movement, that it has always addressed itself to men and boys where they were to be found, that it deliberately avoided theological and dogmatic pronouncements and ecclesiastical entanglements, and that it sought as a lay movement to supply those practical applications of Christian ethics which the churches could not or would not provide.

Your inference that the student branch of the Movement is like one Association you describe as “drifting in Unitarianism,” is totally at variance with the facts: since the early days of the Student Movement it has been the most spiritual and the most consistently devoted to the development of vital Christian faith of any one of the dozen major branches of this quite amazing and universal organization. Your inference that the Y has somehow been disloyal (“semi-socialist”) or unchristian by opening its platforms or forums to liberal or radical speakers (“world church”) is reminiscent of the protests raised by ultra-conservatives of another day when Dwight L. Moody (of whom you appear to approve) brought to an early Northfield student YMCA conference a scientist named Henry Drummond who was the first to apply what you disparage as “evolutionary theories to moral and spiritual realities.”

The material which you quote from Mr. Fisher (page 72) at the bottom of your third column is unfortunately misplaced, since he somehow used the revised form of the “Social Creed of the Churches” of 1932 out of context at this point in his narrative. In my History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America I inadvertently quoted him at this point; an errata sheet issued with the book endeavored to correct this. Hence I apologize on the part of both of us but at the same time question both your use of the material and your conclusion. In endorsing this statement, which you do not identify but infer was some set of wildeyed leftist YMCA notions, the Associations were as usual following the leading churches of the nation, since the “Social Creed” they approved in 1919 was that of the Federal Council of Churches and had then been widely publicized for a decade. But you have virtually changed the meaning of one of these phrases, which originally read “subordination of speculation and the profit motive.…” Why omit “speculation” in this day of legalized gambling?

In my estimation it is not “ironic” to to say that “the YMCA today stands as a vast mission field.…” It is rather a revelation of fundamentalist myopia and I fear ignorance. The “Paris Basis” of 1855, which you cite with apparent approval, was reaffirmed at the Paris centennial celebration in 1955. When the American Associations planned their centennial in 1951, the chief study manual for groups across the country faced the Movement with four imperatives: We must renew our Christian faith, rediscover our sense of Christian vocation, strengthen democracy, and seek world peace and unity. The negative inferences of your editorial are not justified by the facts. This kind of social concern, in spite of your assumption that it died with Moody, continues to be “rooted in the Gospel of Christ.”

A characteristic of the Movement that impressed me as I worked on its centennial history, was a broad and pervasive awareness of faults and deficiencies. Next to the Protestant clergy, the Association secretaryship is the most introspective professional body I have encountered, concerned continuously not only with self-improvement but with the purposes of the Movement. This evidence of the internal activity of the Protestant principle of creative criticism leads me to believe they will find their way back to a more positive Christian witness in the years ahead. I was critical of them in my History. But they published it (admittedly not without some fussing)! I think there is hope for them, especially as I read the literature of the World Movement as reflected in the World Alliance organ, World Communique. I suspect that you also hold this hope, but your editorial is a pretty backhanded way of saying so.

C. Howard HopkinsDeanStetson UniversityDeLand, Fla.

• The YMCA cannot be at one and the same time defended for theological naivete because it was a lay movement avoiding “ecclesiastical entanglements” and excused for social gospelism (including leftist tendencies) because it followed the social pronouncements of ecumenical leaders. CHRISTIANITY TODAY would welcome evidence that the majority of American YMCA’s still carry forward the original zeal of the London Association for prayer meetings, Bible study, personal evangelism, weekly offerings for missions, and that they pursue their interest in public affairs as a reflex of the thrust for personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.—ED.

Re “Will the YMCA Recover its Gospel?,” the Mansfield News-Journal (Nov. 17, 1957) carries an illustrated feature article: “Jazz came to the Y last Sunday.… Some 80 spectators sat quietly …, listening almost religiously.… The Sunday afternoon session was something new and vital.…”

V.T.H.Mansfield, Ohio

We all hope that the YMCA can recapture its evangelistic fervor, and I feel that your article will be instrumental in causing a widespread evaluation of present trends in that organization.

N. H. McCrummenFirst Baptist ChurchSelma, Ala.

My reply to “Will the YMCA Recover Its Gospel” would be, No, not in the United States.… In my opinion, the American YMCA has evolved into a rather confusing paradox by attempting to relate itself to the Paris basis on one hand and at the same time.… no attempt to make the issues of this basis clear in our program.

We have been, and are, an opportunist movement, sensing the pressures of our community and then conforming to them. Unfortunately, while we were maturing into stable and effective community agencies and fellowships, the theological impact made upon us was liberalism. Consequently today our staff, boards, and committees are populated with men and women not sympathetic to evangelism. A constituent today has little chance of learning of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord through YMCA contacts.

It will be interesting to see how we fare in the next decade or so with neo-orthodoxy as today’s theological impact on the one hand, and the pressures of the Roman Catholic Church and its insistence that no Catholic be involved in our devotional and religious experiences on the other.…

We have nothing left but somehow to inculcate Christian ethics and to create a wholesome environment which we claim stems from Christian motivation of our staff. We find ourselves holding Christian by-products, but we’re embarrassed to claim they come from a Christian theology.…

Everett R. JohnsonAsst. Membership Secy.Y.M.C.A.Bridgeport, Conn.

I fully believe that the YMCA has done and is doing a great job in communities around the world. However, its members are united.… simply by a good social organization. This is worthy, but when taken alone seems barren in comparison to a movement born out of loyalty to Jesus Christ. Some of the men in the movement know next to nothing about the Bible, prayer, a vital church membership, and dedication to Jesus Christ.CLIFFORD V. ANDERSONBethel CollegeSt. Paul, Minn.Asst. Dean of Students

MORE ON SEPARATION

“What is Christian Separation?” … has statements … out of harmony with the Scriptures and is a menace to Christianity.… Dr. Cowie seems to hold that shows, card playing, dancing and such like are nonmoral. While the Bible may not mention all things that are wrong, it does give principles that the Christian must abide by. 1 John 2:15–16 says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.…”

T. A. Faulkner, ex-dancing master of Los Angeles, states that “Two-thirds of the girls who are ruined fall through the influence of the dance.” The matron of a home for fallen women in Los Angeles declares that “seven-tenths of the women who go there have fallen through the dance and its influence.” 300 prostitutes were questioned; 80% said they began their downfall through the dance.

C.E. DyeHolbrook Church of GodFlint, Mich.

Surely a Christian should … refrain from those things specifically condemned by the Scriptures and other things harmful to the spiritual welfare. Just as surely the condemning of “all appearances of evil” in others may lead some to pharisaical bigotry.… Bigotry itself is no mean sin as sins go.…

Weston HareWilmington, Del.

The major assertions and principles laid down are entirely right.… However, the mistake Mr. Cowie makes is that he places in the non-moral category some practises which actually involve morals.… Mr. Cowie seems to follow the idea that if something is not specifically named and condemned in the Bible it is non-moral. However, the laws or commandments of the Bible are to be applied wherever they fit.

Christianity is not being hindered to any great extent where I live by legalism, but is being paganized by the prevailing attitude, “If I think it is all right … no one should judge me.” Antimonianism is the real enemy.…

Raymond G. JohnsonFirst Baptist ChurchGlennville, Ga.

Legalism is a very prevalent disease in evangelical Christianity, especially in the fundamentalist context. This legalism breeds the worst kind of hypocrisy. It is my observation, however, that those churches which take pride in emphasizing the social freedom of the individual in the realm of shadow-revelation are all too frequently those churches which first have dissipated the lucid and fundamental teachings of the Scriptures (for example … regeneration … the real bodily resurrection.…). This is not to defend hypocritical legalism but it is to object to hypocritical freedom.…

C. W. BrightwellSutersville Presbyterian ChurchSutersville, Pa.

APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS

Dr. Metzger is condemned (by R. C. Wroten, Nov. 11 issue, p. 23) for leading people “to mistake the apocryphal writings for the written Word of God.” … The Episcopal Church is worse than timid Dr. Metzger. The Apocrypha is part of our official Bible and is required by our canon law to be in the Bibles used on the lecterns of our churches. Further, in churches where Holy Communion has not replaced Morning Prayer, the Apocrypha is read publicly in the church as the first lesson a number of times each year. Advancing from Dr. Metzger’s hesitant opinion, buttressed by John Bunyan, that some good may be found therein, the Episcopal Church boldly proclaims the Apocrypha in church, just as it does “the written Word of God.” Since the manner of announcing the reading of Holy Scripture is prescribed by rubric, no distinction or intonation would differentiate the reading of the Maccabees from Isaiah.…

Lewis SasseSt. Andrews Episcopal ChurchTucson, Ariz.

We write from a sense of deep concern and because of the conviction that America is being destroyed from within—one of the sources of destruction being man’s desecration of the Sabbath Day.

In writing on this subject we have no intention of becoming involved in argument. There are those who speak of the Sabbath as the Lord’s Day, others call it Sunday, and still others prefer to speak of the First Day of the Week.

Nor do we intend to become involved in an argument between those who keep the original Sabbath of the Jews, and those who observe the first day of the week, although we believe New Testament evidence fully supports the generally accepted keeping of the Christian Sabbath, our modern “Sunday.”

The setting aside of one day in seven as a day of rest and worship did not originate with the Jews, nor does it appear for the first time in the law of Moses.

At the conclusion of God’s work of creating the world we are told: “and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it” (Gen. 2:2, 3).

Here God laid down a principle of life which has never been set aside and which mankind violates to his own great loss. We believe that God established a ratio between work and physical and spiritual rest from which flow rich blessings to those who order their lives thereby.

Here in America today only a small minority honor this principle and there is abundant evidence that the Lord’s Day is increasingly becoming a holiday, not a holy day. This tendency is found with church members and is intensified by commercial interests whose concern is mammon, not God.

Within the church there are also those who would demonstrate their “freedom from the law” by ignoring or belittling the importance of the Sabbath. In so doing they forget that while the Christian is free from the Jewish law and saved by grace and grace alone, this in no way relieves him from the moral law.

Also, within the church may be found others who feel that secularism has so destroyed the Christian Sabbath as to make an adjustment necessary, even suggesting that the main worship service be on Thursday evening with communion service on Monday morning, thereby leaving the weekend free for recreation and other secular pursuits.

But most dangerous of all is the philosophy which ignores the reason for the Sabbath and the blessings flowing from it to those who regard it as God’s day.

There is every reason to believe that there is operating in nature a law which makes a day of rest and spiritual refreshment necessary for mankind. The physical effect on those who work seven days a week is a demonstrable fact; efficiency wanes and in time becomes so impaired as to greatly lessen the usefulness of the individual. Furthermore, those who have never known or have turned from one day in seven as a day for spiritual refreshment find their interest in such matters fade away and with it spiritual and moral judgments blunted.

Our Lord made it abundantly clear that a legalistic attitude to the Sabbath destroys the spirit which should pervade the day. He scandalized the Jews by doing good, by healing the sick and sanctioning acts of mercy. Some details of the Sabbath as outlined in the law of Moses cannot be translated into the life of the Christian for they were largely restrictive and geared to the law as a whole, but the principle of rest from labor and the need for spiritual refreshment abide.

The Ten Commandments have never been abrogated. It is still wrong to kill, to steal, to commit adultery. We are still obligated to God and to our neighbor, although the basis of these obligations has changed. To deny the validity of one day in seven as a day of rest and spiritual refreshment is to miss one of God’s great gifts to mankind.

Although the prophet Isaiah was speaking directly to wayward Israel, his words on the Sabbath ring down through the centuries to speak to Christians today and their relevance for our time is proven by the effect a reverent attitude to the Lord’s Day has on those who so observe it: “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride on the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” (Isa. 58:13).

As the “Continental Sabbath” developed in England and Europe, the influence of the church waned. Or, the process may have been just the reverse. In any case, we see exactly the same trend in America today. The prophets of old inveighed against Israel for her sins and again and again included the “profaning of the Sabbath” as one of the sins which was bringing judgment on the nation.

The Christian’s primary reason for observing the Lord’s Day is the spiritual blessings and privileges which flow therefrom. A change of occupation and physical rest bring blessings to the body. Worship, meditation, service to others all combine to bring the refreshment to soul and spirit which make the difference between existing and living.

Has the modern way of life, with its games, amusements, and entertainment, brought the peace and inward power people had when God’s day was recognized as such? Is there not cause to believe that in some measure the physical and mental tensions of today, with their accompanying demands for vitamins and tranquilizing pills, stem from breaking God’s holy laws and cheating him of his rightful place in our lives?

The pagans all around us, no matter how intelligent or cultured, are not to be blamed for the debacle now facing our country. The Christian Sabbath is being destroyed because too many Christians look on the weekends as an invitation to the secular, rather than the spiritual. Some pay lip service to the day by attending one service on Sunday while the rest of the day and evening is completely secularized. But in doing this they are missing some of the greatest blessings in store for those who keep God’s day holy.

The Westminster divines, meeting more than three hundred years ago, knew nothing of the tentacles of our modern octopus of secularism, but facing the problems of their own day they spoke with a wisdom which was steeped in the Scriptures and their voice should be heeded today: “This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.”

New York State voters in November approved a constitutional amendment legalizing bingo when sponsored by churches, charities and other non-profit organizations. This is sufficient commentary on the entrenched position gambling has come to occupy in mid-century America. Yet the Church of Christ has yet to raise its voice unitedly and effectively against this critical threat.

From whatever viewpoint we assess it, the practice of gambling condemns itself as a revelation of man’s folly and wickedness. A remark of the prophet Haggai is pertinent, spoken in another context but with all the pungent sarcasm of God’s messenger: “He who earns wages earns wages to put them into a bag with holes.” Once it is realized that gambling is indeed “a bag with holes,” the individual Christian can formulate his personal course of action intelligently and in obedience to the command of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. And Christians together can make the voice of the Church heard.

Gambling has been defined as “participation in any game of chance in which a prize is offered to the winner at the loser’s loss.” Thus, three factors are essential to gambling: a prize, a decisive element of chance, and a consideration, or a price. Gambling is, therefore, one of the means by which human beings consciously seek to satisfy certain desires to which their corrupted nature is bound to a greater or lesser degree. What then are those desires?

The strongest and most destructive is coveteousness, the passion for a better temporal state. The gambler, professional and amateur alike, is gripped by an oppressive discontent with Providence and the lot thereby assigned to him. He will take almost any risk for monetary gain. His philosophy of happiness is crudely materialistic and is spelled out in dollar signs. Conversely, from his vantage point misery and financial mediocrity are synonymous. The Bible singes covetousness with an unmistakable curse. It is singled out for special prohibition in the tenth commandment of the Decalogue. St. Paul castigates the love of money as the polluted fountain which spouts forth streams of iniquity. Elsewhere covetousness is equated with idolatry, which makes it a violation of the first of Sinai’s awesome laws, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Gambling is rooted in indolence. The gambler does not propose to climb the ladder of material success rung by rung through hard but honest toil; he hopes to leap to the heights in one jump. He wants something for nothing. There are only two honorable ways to the acquisition of things: by labor, which includes legitimate investment, and by gift, which includes inheritance. Apart from the latter, no one has title to personal gain except in exchange for time, effort, or money. This is the decree of Providence, the economic law of the universe, but the gambler boldly defies it.

Gambling stems from hatred of monotony, the desire for excitement. In itself this is not necessarily evil, for man was created to enjoy adventures. This natural bent explains the hero worship which is no respecter of either age or intelligence. But here the moral question is one of fulfillment. To deliberately make oneself a pawn of Lady Luck is to contradict the mind and will of God. To crave excitement to the point of taking uncontrollable risks recklessly is to reveal an inner spiritual void. It is to admit that one has no stabilizing purpose in life, no reliable creed, and no workable scale of values.

What Gambling Does

As for the effect of gambling upon the individual, it invariably shrivels the character and strips a man of any shred of respectability. Since gambling is born of indolence, it is not surprising that surrender to it confirms the gambler in idleness. Increasingly he despises all honest employment; and if he must work, he works at less than maximum efficiency, squandering both time and interest on his gambling. His vicious habit saps his integrity, and he tries to cheat in order to make his wins more probable. He further forfeits his sense of human values and becomes immunized to the needs and suffering of others. His gain is another’s loss, yet the fact never sends so much as a ripple of sympathy across the chords of his heart.

When President McKinley lay on his death bed, bets of $1,000 were made as to whether or not he would still be alive at a given hour. There is no more ghastly scene in history than that of the Roman soldiers carelessly tossing dice at the foot of the Cross for the possession of Christ’s homespun robe. These Romans never heard the seven words of redeeming love which fell from his lips. They were bewitched by a pair of dice.

The gambler’s covetousness entices him to take risks he cannot afford. He is convinced that with the next turn of the wheel he will win. But the games more often than not are fraudulently fixed—even capricious chance cannot smile on whom it will—and the man loses again. Still he plays on, for as the saying goes, “a quitter never wins,” and members of the trade mark him for a “sucker.”

The gambling habit ends in outrageous debts. These in turn drag a once upright citizen down into the gutters of crime and violence. Some years ago a Postmaster General stated that there were more dismissals from his department for dishonesty traceable to gambling than for drunkenness. In 1947, $400 million were embezzled; and from 30 to 75 per cent of this amount was seized by the holders of gambling debts. The game of chance is the first toll gate on the road to crime. Nor is it unusual for the gambler to end among alcoholics and suicides. Within a twelve-year period in Great Britain there were 156 successful or attempted suicides, 719 cases of theft and embezzlement, and 442 bankruptcies, all the products of gambling.

Not everyone who gambles reaps such a sordid fate, just as the moderate drinker does not inevitably become a hardened alcoholic. But these are the potential ends which face every gambler. Infinitely worse, the vice always sears and deadens the soul. The testimony of Jerry McAuley, who after his reclamation from the depths of sin by the sovereign grace of God, supervised New York City’s famous Bowery Mission, is pertinent. McAuley said that he saw scores of drunkards saved, debauchees cleansed, and common thieves redeemed, but he could count on his fingers the gamblers who responded to the invitation of Christ in the Bowery mission.

Social Effects Of Gambling

Although its greatest temptations are introduced through society, gambling is, oddly enough, undeniably anti-social. This, of course, follows naturally upon its corruption of individuals, for society is but the sum of individual human beings. What affects the individual must make its impact for good or ill upon society. Because Jesus Christ intensifies the social obligations of his followers, we must be concerned with the effects of gambling on this level also.

The first and primary institution that gambling attacks is the home. When a man takes to gambling, his home is eased out of the vital center of his life and is rivalled by this deadly outside interest. Often in the wake of extravagant gambling expenses come the collapse of the home, the decay of a marriage, and the tearing of family ties. If the home and marriage survive at all, the gambler’s wife and children are often forced to exist in material discomfort and economic insecurity. This is true not only of the professional gambler but of the amateur as well. Indeed, many a gambler leaves his family at his death under a cloud of disgrace born of debts they did not incur and cannot hope to pay.

Beyond the deprivation of the gambler’s family, there is an insidious connection between the gambler’s table and syndicated crime. The vast majority of percentage men are nothing but cheap swindlers who defraud the public. Gambling most abounds in districts already infamous for lawlessness, gang warfare, and prostitution. Senate investigations have shown that gambling has been adopted as the basic source of income by the organized criminals of this country who were driven out of the bootlegging racket with the repeal of prohibition.

The history of gambling in our nation is replete with frightening records of powerful alliances between gamblers and disreputable politicians. Without casting suspicion on the rank and file of honest office holders, let us face the lurid fact that not a few politicians occupy posts purchased for them by gambling profits and not a few others have sold their honor at the gambler’s bid for protection and exemption from legal prosecution. It has been conservatively estimated by reliable authorities that the racketeers spend more than $4 billion annually in the seduction of political officials and nominees.

All of us know what gambling occasionally does to wholesome athletics, both amateur and professional. In general, attempts to undermine the sportsmanship of rival teams in commercialized sports are unsuccessful. But the pressure is there, and now and then we read of a contest that has purposely been “thrown” because one or more players could not resist the glitter of gold.

Economic Effects Of Gambling

If gambling wrecks the individual and demoralizes society, it also disrupts and impairs the economy.

It is responsible for a perilous distribution of capital. The winners in all public games collect only a small percentage of the loser’s loss, the larger portion being seized by the crooked operators. Thus exorbitant sums of money which otherwise might be channeled into the promotion of the public welfare are not only taken out of circulation but are diverted into the soiled hands and bulging pockets of an irresponsible clique. This is no minor consideration; as early as 1832 the money spent by Americans on lottery tickets alone amounted to $66 million, five times the total budget of the Federal government for the same year. Recently it was estimated that the proceeds from organized gambling are in excess of $20 billion annually.

Those who loiter around the gambling dens constitute a severe loss of manpower in our economy. And the personnel occupied with the operation of the gambling machine are beyond count. To this manpower loss we must add the diminished productivity of the amateur gamblers who approach their daily tasks unenthusiastically and with a double mind. This much is certain: A nation of gamblers will not long be able to hold a place of influence in the world today, nor will it be able to cope with the menace of a spreading totalitarian philosophy of the magnitude of Soviet Communism.

Because gambling breeds lawlessness, it causes the crime bill to soar. The demand for larger police forces can be met only by a sizable increase in taxation. It is an arresting fact that the city of Reno, Nevada, where gambling is legalized, with a population of only 35,000, maintains a police force of 80. Relief agencies likewise complain that legalized gambling adds to their burden. On the one hand, it slashes their receipts by drying up both the financial resources and the charitable inclinations of the participants. On the other hand, by impoverishing a noticeable percentage of the gambling public it commits more people to their care.

A bag with holes! Who can find a better description of gambling?

Gambling Within The Church

The most vital problem, however, concerns gambling within the Christian Church. Those who sanction the practice usually commend it on the ground that it is an easy and lucrative method of raising funds for the Church and its inadequately supported projects. The financial condition of the Church in general is indeed a cause for grave concern. But it is an affront to the Church to insinuate that apart from the aid of gambling it either cannot or will not uphold the program assigned it by the Lord.

Is gambling, then, the solution to the financial problems of the Church? Indeed not. The fact is that the larger part of the proceeds from church gambling go to cover expenses, salaries, taxes, and commissions. On the average, only 14 cents on the dollar is profit. Church-sponsored gambling is, in fact, a severe deterrent to the spirit of voluntary giving and of true stewardship among church members. In some instances the drop in such income after the introduction of gambling has been, by official records, close to 50 percent. Once people, even Christians, are encouraged to anticipate something in return for their contributions, their willingness to give without thought of gain is stifled. Because profits from gambling do not offset loss in gifts the latter end is worse than the former.

But the worst fallacy in this theory is moral. The Church exists to promote universal acceptance of and compliance with the highest moral principles of society. More fundamental still, it exists to inculcate within the hearts of all men the ethical and spiritual ideals of its Founder and Head, Jesus Christ. Its basic doctrine is that by his atoning blood Christ cleanses the sinful nature of man and by his Holy Spirit invests man with the nature and dynamic of godliness. Every appeal of the Church to the Christian conscience must therefore conform entirely to the new and divine nature which is in harmony with the mind of God. And the only method of money raising consistent with the mind of God and human nature renewed in his image is the voluntary gift of gratitude, the spontaneous outflow of the redeemed heart to its Saviour, and the fulfillment of the Master’s principles of stewardship. Gambling, within or without the Church is a vice of sinful flesh.

In addition, when the Church approves any form of gambling, it gives to all gamblers alike an aura of respectability and an entering wedge into the community. It curtails effective enforcement of gambling laws already in existence. It trains its members, especially its youth, in the habit of gambling and feeds them to the racketeers, for most people can perceive no valid distinction between playing a game of chance in the Church or somewhere else.

God stir our consciences to act in accordance with his will and the facts of the case.

Richard Allen Bodey is minister of Third Presbyterian Church of North Tonawanda, New York. He holds the A.B. degree from Lafayette College and B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Books are his special interest; his 2200 volumes include autographed works by giants of the past, among them Spurgeon’s copy of J. A. Alexander’s Commentary on Acts.

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ—(Titus 2:13).

To the early Christians belief in the second coming of Christ was not a matter of speculation and controversy. Rather it was a gospel to be proclaimed as making meaningful the entire scope of the Christian message. The preaching and writings of the Old Testament prophets focused always upon the promised incarnation of God in Jesus Christ as the event in history which would give purpose to their utterances. So also the proclamations of the New Testament preachers and writers point ever to the second coming of Jesus Christ at the culmination of history as that “one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves.” There is no book or message in the New Testament which does not expressly declare or imply the return of our Lord as that “blessed hope” of those whose trust is fixed in him.

If this event was of such vital importance to the original heralds of salvation, not in the field of dialectics but as a message of assurance and hope, should not modern evangels rescue it from the realm of division to make of it the factor of unity that gives completeness to our gospel? To that end, therefore, let us consider “The Gospel of the Blessed Hope.”

The Second Coming And History

Preceding our text the Apostle Paul declared, “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation to all men, hath appeared [marginal reading], teaching us that … we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope.…” In this passage the apostle runs the entire gamut of history from eternity to eternity—past, present, and future.

“For the grace of God … hath appeared.” Here is the past, both immediate and remote. Stated in these words is the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus, the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8), who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us … full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“Teaching us that … we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.” These words point to the continuing present both for the writer and his readers in succeeding generations. While the gospel has a past in retrospect and a future in anticipation, it is ever present in its application. We are in error if we think of those people who were contemporary with Jesus and the apostles as living in a vacuum apart from the everyday pressures of life. They were men of like passions as we are, beset with the same temptations. They strived and failed, attempted and accomplished, even as we do. “Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts” as they sought to live “soberly, righteously, and godly” was to them a struggle no less than it is to us.

“Looking for that blessed hope”—before them beckoned the unfolding future, with its promise of victory and vindication. The dawn of a better tomorrow kept first-century men on their feet just as certainly as it does twentieth-century men. Is not this the part played by the “blessed hope” in the lives of Christian people of every age? Without it, how quickly the early Christians would have been overwhelmed in the maelstrom of persecution, hardships and tribulation! How would we go another step if suddenly that hope should dim?

That this is true may be seen even by a hurried examination of the teachings of Jesus. When John the Baptist came preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, the entire land was awakened from centuries of lethargic sleep. The One for whom they and their fathers had been looking was soon to appear! Intermittently throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry this enthusiasm arose, but finally their hopes entered his grave with him. But when Jesus appeared alive, a foretaste of a more “glorious appearing,” their hope was resurrected also.

It was because Jesus knew what was in man that he constantly held up before them the promise of his return. To the dual fact of Jesus’ resurrection and promised reappearing at the end of the age, more than to any other, may we attribute this patient endurance. That they regarded his second coming as imminent is evidence of their faithfulness to his exhortation to watch and be ready (Matt. 24:44–51).

If we apply this same principle to every Christian generation even until now, and project it into the uncertain future, we shall see the tremendous place that the “blessed hope” occupies in the meaning of history. Apart from it life on this earth is truly what Shakespeare in Macbeth said that it is:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

But in the light of the “blessed hope” every segment of history, even of our lives, takes on infinite meaning. By it we can read the history of nations and civilizations with fresh understanding. In it we learn “the meaning of our tears.” The youth cut down in the early morning hours of life before he has had opportunity to try his wings of aspiration and desire! The aged, having run the gamut of life, yet with seemingly infinite potential unrealized! The defeat of truth amid the triumph of wrong! The yawning grave as it opens to receive all the earthly remains of those whom we have loved, and lost—for a while!

But at the very moment when our eyes are dimmed by the darkness of frustration, we hear the voice of Jesus, “Look up!” and see the “glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” And in that light we no longer see through a glass darkly or blurred, but face to face.

It is no wonder then that Paul on Mars Hill climaxed his philosophy of history with these words, “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.…” (Acts 17:31). Those who knew the teachings of Jesus would readily recognize the implication of the “blessed hope.” It is as though the apostle had bound up the ingredients of history in one neat package. Beginning with the creation (Acts 17:24b–30), coming finally to that great day of the Lord when all wrongs would be righted, all sin punished, all righteousness rewarded, when there would be a “new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13).

The Second Coming And Redemption

It is in the light of the “blessed hope” and its attendant event, the judgment, that we can best understand a further word of our text: “looking for … the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.…”

The Scriptures picture the “blessed hope” as one of terror for some (Rev. 6:15–17) and great joy for others (2 Tim. 4:8). The difference is to be found in the word redemption. Knowing this, “our great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ … gave himself for us, that he might redeem us.…”

But redemption itself has little or no meaning apart from the second coming of Christ. Certainly the death of Jesus would have been empty apart from his resurrection. To this truth the Scriptures testify abundantly. But if we remove the “blessed hope” we are still without God and without hope in this world. If we are redeemed for this life only, then we are of all men most miserable. Herein is the full meaning of our Lord’s words, “I go to prepare a place for you … I will come again, and receive you unto myself.…” (John 14:3). The Old Testament saints were saved by grace through faith, looking forward in the assurance that Christ would come. Likewise, New Testament saints are saved by grace through faith, looking not only backward to the fact that he came, but looking forward to the “blessed hope” when he will come again.

In the New Testament we find a word more comprehensive than redemption—salvation. Actually it is threefold in meaning: instantaneous, or redemption from the power of sin; continuing, or growth in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; ultimate, or our final glorification in heaven. It was to this last that the author of Hebrews referred when he said, “So Christ was once [once for all] offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without [apart from] sin unto salvation” (9:28).

The first coming of our Lord was to the end that whosoever would believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Innately man was immortal, but in his lost condition immortality held for him only dread and despair. Immortality separated from God is spiritual death (Rom. 6:23; John 5:29f.). In his death, therefore, Jesus in our stead suffered the penalty for sin; in his resurrection he triumphed over sin and death to the end that he might redeem us from sin and become the earnest of our resurrection from the dead. But to what end?

Had the story ended there the disciples might well have looked longingly and despairingly into the clouds hovering over Olivet’s brow, knowing that they were left as orphans (John 14:18, literal translation) in the world. To be sure, Jesus’ promise, “I will come to you,” involved the coming of the Holy Spirit, but it included far more. This the disciples would remember as the angels said, “This same Jesus … shall come in like manner.…” (Acts 1:11). Down the road over which they must travel were persecution and death, but always beyond was the “blessed hope” of his glorious return, that where he was there would they be also. Their corruptible and mortal bodies would die, but awaiting them were those that are immortal and incorruptible. Soon in their ears would be heard the angry shouts of mobs that opposed their labors of love, but always in their hearts they heard from heaven the “shout” of the Lord, “with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God!” (1 Thess. 4:16). They might see their fellow-Christians fall by the sword, but with assurance that “the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16–17). And in these words they found comfort, strength, and a “blessed hope.”

The Old Testament prophet avidly but futilely sought to grasp this truth. “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him” (Isa. 64:4; cf. 1 Cor. 2:9). “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.…” (1 Cor. 2:10). With the inspired seer on Patmos, therefore, we have an even more “blessed hope” as in anticipation we stand before the great white throne to see our names written in the Lamb’s book of life. Beyond that we behold a new heaven and a new earth wherein the tabernacle of God is with men, where there will be no more tears, pain, sorrow, or death. Where “there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:3–5).

The Second Coming And Evangelism

Returning to our text we find that the apostle points out the historical purpose of our redemption in Christ, that he might “purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good words.” Here we have the suggestion of evangelism, which also finds its ultimate meaning in the “blessed hope.”

As Jesus and his apostles climbed the Mount of Olives they inquired if at that time he would restore the kingdom to Israel. To which Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost [Spirit] is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:6–8). Immediately thereafter he ascended into heaven. As the disciples gazed heavenward two men in white apparel told them of his return, asking why they stood gazing after him. Implied in their words is insistence that they be about the Lord’s business which he had a moment before committed to their care, the task of evangelism.

Thus we discover a twofold relation between evangelism and the “blessed hope.” In the first place, they had a message to declare, for the gospel of the kingdom must “be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14). In this there is a twofold urgency: all nations must hear the gospel before he comes; and he cannot come until they do. In the meanwhile he waits “expecting till his enemies be made his footstool” (Heb. 10:13).

Still again, as stewards of the gospel the followers of Christ must give an account of their stewardship at his coming. It is no simple thing to have this treasure in earthen vessels! The knowledge of what awaits lost men in the judgment should weigh heavily upon our hearts. Paul realized this when he said, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.…” (2 Cor. 5:11). The Bible tells us that if we fail to do so, and they perish, then their blood is on our hands.

Harking back to our text we find a dual emphasis in evangelism, both of which are related to the “blessed hope.” In the first place, Christ is purifying unto himself a peculiar people. This end is accomplished not only in redemption but in progressive sanctification of his followers that they might become fit instruments in his service. The incentive for this is not only our changed natures, love for Christ and passion for lost souls. It is further found in the knowledge of our Lord’s return. To this end Peter, after declaring the fact of the Lord’s certain return, exhorts, “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation [manner of life] and goodness” (2 Pet. 3:11). He concludes with the practical advice, “Wherefore [in view of the Lord’s return], beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless” (Verse 14).

As belief in the imminent return of our Lord is conducive to holy living, the loss of that conviction produces the opposite effect. This may be seen today as it was in the first century. In this light we understand Peter’s warning: “I stir up your minds by way of remembrance … knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Pet. 3:1, 3–4). Quite naturally such conduct negates one’s Christian influence, making it impossible for one to fulfill his stewardship of the gospel.

In the second place, a purified people must be “zealous of good works.” Many good people are good for nothing. Thus in the Christian’s life there must be not only a negative attitude by which he abstains from evil practices. In addition there must be the positive element of zeal with regard to good works. That this latter attitude involves a proper regard to the “blessed hope” may be seen in the many warnings of Jesus. This is the sense of his warning regarding constant readiness (Matt. 24:44). He is the “faithful and wise servant” who uses his peculiar position “go give them meat in due season,” or to share with other the life which has been placed in his charge. On the other hand, he is an “evil servant” who says in his heart, “My lord delayeth his coming,” and “shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken,” or to use his peculiar privilege for personal pleasures.

In the same vein do we understand the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). To “his own servants” the Lord has entrusted “his goods” during his absence. Two servants proved to be good stewards, while a third, honest but indolent, became a “wicked and slothful servant.” “After a long time (author’s italics) the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them” (Verse 19). The details of this reckoning are too well known to require delineation. Had there been a daily expectancy on the part of the one servant certainly his attitude with respect to his stewardship would have been different.

Do we need to apply this evident truth? Daily conduct in personal righteousness and faithful stewardship of the gospel will be in direct proportion to one’s attitude toward the personal return of the Lord. What we are and what we do today will be determined largely by the degree of expectancy we have as to the imminence of the “blessed hope.” If properly regarded the day-to-day matters of our lives will take on a different degree of importance. Proper perspective will give precedence to personal righteousness and positive witnessing over the social and economic pursuits which absorb our energies and passions.

Of surpassing importance, therefore, are the words of Jesus, “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 25:13, author’s italics).

We see, therefore, the vital place that the gospel of the “blessed hope” occupies in every phase of life. It gives meaning to the broad scope of history, to our personal redemption, and to the practical element of evangelism. To this end let us exalt it not as a subject of debate and speculation, but as the incentive and end of holy and effective living.

Herschel H. Hobbs is a native of Alabama. Howard College, where he received the A.B. degree in 1932, conferred on him an honorary D.D. degree in 1941. He also holds the Th.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Pastor of First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, he is an active leader in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In a short article it is difficult to present more than basic thoughts on so vast a problem as “prophetic time.” This subject has been our major study at the National Center of Scientific Research for several years.

One’s concept of “time” in turn determines his concept of the world, of existence, of destiny. Like revelation, it has a natural meaning (the Greek rational and humanist) or the supernatural, gained from divine inspiration.

The Hellenistic Concept

Greek humanism is historically responsible for the man-centered thinking that governs all civilization. Most authoritatively represented by Plato and Aristotle, it is devoid of revelation in the supernatural biblical sense, and is basically speculative. By metaphysical research the realities of “time” and of “eternity” are resolved as problems of being. Since in this speculative system God is the object and man the central subject, the knowledge of God, the relation of time to eternity, the nature of time, everything, in fact, becomes an ontological problem.

In Platonic thought time is simply a mirror of eternity. It reflects the eternal, though itself not eternal. It is only an abstraction that breaks into the operation of the non-eternal cosmos, to call to mind periodically the eternal of which the temporal is the moving image. The circle is another Greek picture of time. Unrelated to a non-temporal eternity, and inserted into the cycle of ceaseless cosmic repetitions, the soul is a slave not only to its body and to the cosmos, but to time.

Greek thought, therefore, associates the time cycle with spatial limitation, as well as with corruption and destruction. The soul’s longing for eternity is simply an unreflective intuition; since the soul is situated beyond time, any insertion into time is ontologically contradictory. The Greek notion thus invalidates all thought of divine appearance and incarnation in time. It spoils any Christian possibility of salvation and of eternal life.

Professor Oscar Cullmann has convincingly shown the essential conflict between the Greek and biblical time concepts (Christ et le temps, Delachaux et Niestle, 1947). Other writers such as Holscher, G. Schrenk, Jean Guitton, M. Doerne, G. Delling, likewise indicate that biblical time can be translated diagramatically only as a line (and not as a closed circle) which begins at creation and whose end is in God. The center of this line is Christ. The end points, whether historically determined or not, are moments chosen by God (kairoi), and fixed in the history of revelation (e.g., creation and parousia), as major landmarks in the time expanse called aeon in the New Testament. These prescribed points relate to infinity in two ways: from the point of view of the other world they are located in terms of creation; from that of this world, they are located in terms of the parousia. Without this no idea of time would be possible.

The straight and ascending characteristic of time (whose crucial point is Jesus Christ) is significant, Cullmann asserts, for both prophetic time and New Testament time specifically. But we must reject his assertion that Christianity and Judaism locate the imaginary center of the time-line in two radically different positions (p. 58). If we consider the situation not from the view of mere history but from the customary view of revelation (that is to say, prophetically), it is impossible to speak of different positions. We must speak rather of different perspectives.

For the prophet whose message is essentially “Christo-centric,” the imaginary center of the time line was future. For the Christian, the center is in the past. One is the perspective of anticipation, the other, the perspective of fulfillment. But Christ yet remains for both the center point of time.

The harmony of biblical revelation demands the same time center for both Old and New Testament economies. It must be located in the future (prophetic perspective) and in the past (Christian perspective).

Thereby we show that the great moments set forth by prophetic history are none other than the “times” that Jesus was to fulfill (Gal. 4:4). What are these times? They are the incidents, the acts, the circumstances sprung from a divine decree, generally associated with men chosen by God, whose purpose (either plainly or typologically expressed) is always the fulfillment of the plan of salvation of the world.

The prophetic time line—in the past, in the future, as in the present—is always the line of Christ. He who was predestined before the foundation of the world for his role of mediator, as the divine Logos ushered in at creation the line that he carried forward through the prophetic mystery of the old covenant, and through his incarnation and glorification. This line will terminate at the end of the present world with the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth, where God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).

Unity of revelation is assured in Jesus Christ, “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). It is in this train of thought that Calvin wrote: “The covenant made with the ancient fathers in its substance and truth, is so like ours that one can say it is one with it. It differs only in the mode of administration.… So that nothing will hinder the promise made in the Old and in the New Testaments from remaining always the same, and Jesus Christ from being the unique foundation of one and of the other” (Institutes II, ch. 10, 2, and 11, 1). We can, indeed, speak of Christ as the crucial Center and the sovereign norm for the history of revelation.

Prophecy And Time

Contrary to the Greek cycle theory, the linear concept of time would say in relation to prophetic thought:

Time is not an abstraction. It is not a question of a spatially conceived here-below and next world ontologically irreconcilable. It is rather the past, the present and the future at whose center revelation is accomplished without breaking continuity.

Time is not opposed to God. It has its source in God. God is the originator of time. He is the beginning of it (Gen. 1:1). He is master of it (cf. Ps. 75:3; 102:14; Hab. 2:3; Deut. 2:21; Exod. 13:10; 18:26, etc.). He is the end of it (Rev. 22:13).

Time is not opposed to eternity. Revelation summons the insertion of eternity into time. The message of salvation implies the mystery of the incarnation. Between eternity and time there is no absolutely qualitative difference.

The expression eternity (olam) traverses all prophetic literature; it reveals the relationship of unbroken time (God’s unlimited time) to portions of time brought about by this very unbroken, unlimited time. (Concerning this concept of olam, see H. Sasse, Theologischen Worterbuch, Zum N.T., T.I-).

Prophecy does not know a God outside of time. Because it inserts God into time, it calls man to participate in the eternity which is the prerogative of God’s time.

Whatever may be the aspects common to our time and to eternity, God alone can comprehend the full extent and know the measure of time. For he alone reigns over time. In his infinite and eternal being he does not permit man to reign over time. Ability to live only moment by moment with no power to embrace the totality of times that comprise the stages of sanctification, the stages toward completeness, toward perfect access to God, this is the trial and enigma of time.

Although God enters our time (for he is Spirit and he is God), man (for he is carnal) cannot yet enter into the time of God. While God has placed eternity (olam) into the heart of man (the original Hebrew says expressly: “God has placed eternity [olam] in their heart” [Eccl. 3:11]), the problem is that of its realization by faith. Notwithstanding certain joys of eternity already experienced, man is for the present withheld from fullest realization of promised blessings (salvation, justice, happiness).

Certainly this ordeal is of an entirely different nature from that which may haunt Platonic minds. For the Bible believer, the trial is of a purely spiritual and moral nature. It is a thirst to possess, a longing of the soul created in God’s image and regenerated, destined to live in his presence and to partake of his glory (cf. Deut. 14:2; 1 Pet. 2:9–10). The believer knows that after death he will attain to his glorious calling. He can already live it mysteriously by faith. But the impossibility of living it presently in its absolute meaning is distressing to him. The circumstances of time, the moments imposed by limitations of space and corporeality account for man’s longing after God.

“Oh, if you would rend the skies and descend!” (Isa. 64:1). This is the cry of the prophet who knows that God surmounts the limitations of our time, that he consents “to descend” from above into our hereness, and that the “rending” of the heavens will be actually consummated in Christ (cf. Isa. 53).

“My soul within me languishes in waiting” (Job 19:27). This is Job’s confession, who seemingly unjustly tested physically and materially knows, nevertheless, that his God is accessible to him, that he will see him with his eyes when liberated from the flesh, that this “redemptor” God (Goel) will be gracious to him (cf. Job 19:25–28).

Between the sighing of Job or of Isaiah, who interpret the believer’s longing for the destiny to which God invites him, and the Greek philosophers’ unanswered plea for liberation from an eternal time cycle empty of God, looms the gulf separating followers of the biblical God offered in Jesus Christ from the followers of human reason which expires in its impossible quest of a God in its image. Here below, under restrictions of the flesh and of temporality, the believer may suffer and weep. But he does not grieve as those without hope (1 Thess. 4:13). He knows that eternity will transcend the limitations of time.

Dr. Andre Lamorte served for 15 years as Dean of the Faculty and as Professor of Theology at Aix-en-Provence in France. He holds the Th.D. degree from Montpellier and in 1954 was named attache to the National Center of Scientific Research.

Man’s misuse of the best that technology and science have produced is nowhere more appalling than in the field of motion pictures. Misuse of atomic power may destroy man’s body, but misuse of the motion picture destroys man’s soul. As the “pen is mightier than the sword,” the camera is mightier than the H-bomb.

In the light of the peaceful potential of the atom, it is ironical to contemplate the horrible threat of thermonuclear warfare. But the incalculable moral and spiritual devastation wrought by the modern film is infinitely more ironical in view of the evangelistic possibility latent in the art and science of pictures. (One of Hollywood’s leading producers, at the suggestion of his clergyman father, dedicated his life to the camera as his “pulpit” and his films have been seen by many millions of the world’s population.)

Surrender By Default

It is sad that the most effective instrument of modern mass communication has contributed so much to the disintegration of the moral and spiritual foundations of our culture. But what makes it tragic is that Christians allow it to happen, having surrendered this immeasurably powerful weapon by default to forces so materialistic that profit became their god regardless of the degenerative effect on society.

Historically it would appear that evangelical Christians had decided the technology which produced the motion picture industry was diabolical and the science of motion pictures and the art of drama inherently evil. Whatever the cause, the effect has been that an entire industry has been largely “scuttled” rather than made to serve Christ.

In recent years this fabulously effective tool has been “discovered” by the church, but there persists a characteristic disinclination toward the industry, one evidence of which is the stubborn “nothing-good-can-come-from-Hollywood” attitude. By renouncing the industry per se, right of guidance was repudiated. Taking the position everything Hollywood does is wrong has been at the sacrifice of any appreciable Christian influence. This does not justify the production of whatever makes money regardless of its effect on society, nor excuse the industry’s failure to take the leadership incumbent upon it to use its powerful influence constructively. But it does mean that the criticism that indicts Hollywood in toto fails to have any force whatever. Obviously Hollywood will not heed the voice that would abolish Hollywood!

When occasionally Hollywood produces a picture with moral or spiritual thrust, those who should applaud refuse patronage and the result is box office failure. Hollywood may choose to produce what the public will buy or stop producing. They have little encouragement from a Christian public that should be in a position to demand the highest and best. (Even Christian producers struggle to survive, and too often collapse under economic pressure.)

A vivid illustration of this (in a related field) is the fact that one Elvis Presley record sold more copies in 1956 than all sacred records made by all sacred artists combined. Evidently those who purchase “Houn’ Dog” are more committed to their “music.” Incidentally, where does this put the sacred artist? He cannot depend on music for a livelihood. Must he forfeit his gift in order to make a living following his dedication to Christ? In a group of a thousand disc jockeys, only three indicated that they had had any requests for a sacred program.

Must We Be Jonahs?

One might think God loves the world—except Hollywood; as though some strange inflexible destiny precludes redemption to this industry. Assuming that Hollywood is all darkness—totally evil as some are prone to think—is it to be forsaken? Need we to learn with Jonah that pagan cities are candidates for salvation? Or is Hollywood with its strategic propaganda weapon to be abandoned to sub-Christian if not altogether Godless, degenerate forces?

There are those within the industry whose answer is a resounding NO! Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, they will not surrender so easily. They do not blindly disregard the “evils of Hollywood”; nevertheless, aware of its overwhelming potential influence for good, they see it as their mission field. At the risk of censure by those without, they labor and pray for a spiritual awakening that will capture its talents, in part at least, to evangelize the world. Not only do they bear the antagonism of some they are trying to reach, as well as the indescribable secular pressures within the industry, but they feel the opposition of Christians on the outside whose prayers and encouragement they desperately need. Let me introduce some of them:

Three men sat with bowed heads at a table in the restaurant of one of the largest studios. The one who led in prayer was a top executive. As they lunched, the conversation centered in Jesus Christ. Declared the studio executive, “To me Christianity is absolutely relevant. In this business Jesus Christ is my daily strength. I do not see how men get along without him.…”

More than two hundred fifty, among them some leading stars, gathered in the grand ballroom of a Beverly Hills hotel to preview a Christian film. One was a star who had resigned at the peak of her career to teach Sunday school. Consistently she has declined tempting offers, including several from Las Vegas night clubs involving a weekly salary running into five figures. “Because,” she insists, “I do not want the children in my Sunday School class to have a teacher who dances in a night club.”

Also present were two other stars who told of their conversion to Christ and the satisfaction of life committed to him. One has entered full time Christian service, the other remains in pictures. A third sang her testimony. Won to Christ during a Hollywood Christian Group meeting, she will soon begin the role of a pastor’s wife as her husband, also in pictures until won to Christ in the Hollywood Group, graduates from seminary and enters the ministry.…

Hollywood Christian Group

Visit another Hollywood Group meeting. Except for an occasional reference to entertainment business, it could be testimony time with any group of evangelical Christians. Actually it is the service concluding the annual Bible conference of the Hollywood Christian Group at Forest Home in the mountains of Southern California. One who spoke was an attractive woman who had attended her first meeting of the group during an engagement in a Los Angeles night club. Yielding to the persistence of a friend, she rushed over to the meeting between shows at the club. Though she had had a Christian background, she had grown indifferent. Her promising vocal career seemed destined for stardom. The new Christian fellowship awakened in her an interest in Christ and made her aware of a loneliness and frustration she had not dared to admit even to herself. She accepted Christ and subsequently dedicated her life for his service. Now she uses her talented voice in sacred concert and evangelism.

An older man, a veteran of the industry holding a high position in the technical end testified, “I think the greatest thrill of my life came when I was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar … That is, it was the greatest thrill until I began to take Christ seriously and committed my life to him. Nothing compares with that!”

Among the more than seventy-five who spoke was a young man. Obviously nervous, he stood on one foot and the other waiting his opportunity. It was not difficult to recognize him as the popular lead in a TV feature film series. So at home before a camera and under hot lights, the young star seemed anything but a professional as he waited impatiently, thumbs hooked in the hind pockets of his levis.

Finally his turn came. With an awkward gesture he beckoned a lovely young woman sitting at the edge of the crowd. A wave of polite laughter swept through the group as she took her place self-consciously beside her husband. Putting his arm around her he began, “We wouldn’t be together if it were not for Jesus Christ! A year ago our marriage was on the rocks. Nothing seemed to work for us—until somebody on the set invited me to the Monday night meeting. That was the beginning of a new life for us.”

He went on to describe their first group meeting, the misgiving with which they went, the unusual warmth of the friendships, the message. They raised their hands for prayer at the close. During coffee time a member took them aside, explained how one began the Christian life, and prayed with them. “This last year has been the greatest of our lives!” he exclaimed.

Something else he said is important, though some will misunderstand, because it affords an insight into a phase of the problem. “Jesus Christ must want me in this business because I couldn’t do it otherwise. Every time I go before a camera I pray my life will be a witness to the others working on the picture.” This raises the inevitable question: “Should these people quit Hollywood when they make a stand for Christ?” It would be unrealistic to pretend there are not those who, lured by prospects of popularity and riches, remain in pictures at the expense of their witness, but it is unjust to assume that all in the business are thus motivated.

As a matter of fact, at least a dozen members of the Hollywood Group have discontinued their careers to obey what they considered a call to Christian service. There are some (as in other professions) who have publicly identified themselves with the Church whose lives have been a reproach. But there are a large number of genuine Christians who have prayerfully considered their responsibility in light of the criticism they know to be forthcoming and their decision has been to remain in the profession believing it to be God’s leading, hoping to win their colleagues, many of whom do not have the slightest idea what authentic Christianity is.

Most of those won to Christ in Hollywood have been reached by the witness of local personalities. Whether they might have been reached otherwise is highly speculative. Christians in Hollywood represent a beachhead through which the Church has an opportunity to infiltrate the entire industry. This frontline witness demands hardy warriors and they desperately need sustained contact and a constant flow of prayer support. This problem in spiritual logistics ought to be borne largely by the Church outside.

The issue is easily over-simplified. One who knows and loves Hollywood is tempted to whitewash it. Those uninformed or misinformed are apt to consign it entirely to the devil. Be that as it may, Hollywood is here to stay, part of the world for whom Christ died and to which he commissioned the Church to take the Gospel of divine love and judgment. Take an average run-of-the-mill cross section of humanity anywhere in America and you will find its counterpart in Hollywood. Excluding the minority who make headlines, the people are disarmingly normal. Picture making is serious business and there is as little (or much) commercialism and secularism among them as in any other industry. Generally they are misinformed about Christianity like the average secular American. They are not familiar with the Gospel, or if they are, do not associate it with personal need. For the most part Christianity is thought to be an ethic, nothing more, and comparing themselves with the world outside, Hollywood people are inclined to feel their average is rather high. They are aware of the reputation Hollywood has and are ashamed of the incidents that justify it. But they feel, and rightly so, that most Hollywood folk are respectable and undeserving of the disparagement so readily directed at everyone in the colony.

Stars That Twinkle

In the matter of virtue, Hollywood is outstanding in one respect. Show people as a whole are unusually charitable with a concern for the down-and-outer, a willingness to go the second mile that is peculiar to their kind. Unfortunately this charity is equated with genuine Christianity and inclines them to think they are as “religious” as most, and more so than many. This common caricature challenges Christians in the industry to bear faithful witness to the Gospel. No group in the writer’s experience is more insistent for the Gospel or less willing to compromise. Believing no one can reach people in Hollywood like people in Hollywood, they accept as a divine mandate the responsibility to begin where they are to make disciples.

It would be naive to assume that Hollywood will ever be wholly, or even mostly, Christian, any more than any other category of society. But in the darkness that is Hollywood there are stars that twinkle. In the motion picture capital there abides a dynamic fellowship of Christians demonstrating that Christ is contemporary and relevant, that the purpose of his incarnation was redemption. God has not left himself without a witness … not even in Hollywood!

Richard C. Halverson was born and raised in North Dakota. From the age of 10 he was on the stage, and at 19 he went to Hollywood for a career in motion pictures. There he was converted to Christ, and answered God’s call to the ministry. He received the B.A. from Wheaton College and B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. He served nine years as Minister of Leadership and Education in Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Since 1957 he has been Associate Executive Director of International Christian Leadership in Washington, D. C.

Preacher In The Red

THE GLORIOUS PROFESSION

Last year I needed new insurance on my car. In an insurance office a friendly lady pulled out a long application form and started asking questions.

“What is your occupation?” I answered, “Pastor.” Shy as I am sometimes, I may have said this just not loud enough. Anyway, she wrote down what she understood me to say. The following interview was the result.

“Do you use your car for your work or just for pleasure?” The question puzzled me somewhat but, after some soul-searching, I answered, “For both.” “Well, I mean,” she explained, “do you carry your tools in your car?” That made me wonder whether you can call a pocket Bible a tool. But she went on to the next question. “Who is your employer?” “The Christian Reformed Church of Brooks.” She looked at me, as if that was an unheard of precedent and finally brought out, “Are you employed full time by that church?” to which I could with conviction answer, “Yes.” This clear answer only seemed to add to the confusion. Now she tried to come down to my level of understanding and asked, “Well, you probably have a contract with that church, but eh—let me say—when you are through with that job, who will be your employer then?” Answer, “I won’t get through with this job.” That proved almost too much for her. Although still smiling, there was that now-let’s-get-this-straight resolution in her voice as she said with emphasis on the last word, “Do you really mean to say that the Christian Reformed church provides steady employment for a plasterer!”—The Rev. WILLIAM L. VANDER BEEK, Brooks, Alberta, Canada.

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It is half-a-century since Peter Taylor Forsyth gave the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale in 1907 and three dozen years since his death in 1921 at the age of seventy-three. Of the forty-five years of his ministerial life twenty-five were spent as pastor of Congregational churches in Bradford, London, Manchester, Leicester, and Cambridge respectively and twenty as principal of Hackney College, Hampstead. Like many another man of genius, his influence has been greater since his death than it was during his lifetime. Indeed, if he was a prophet to his own generation, he may be said to be even more so to us in our mid-century situation. His mind and his message are preserved for us in his numerous writings, and it is impossible not to be stimulated and challenged by a personality of such intellectual energy and vision who gloried so wholeheartedly in the Cross of Christ.

His literary style is, as his daughter has remarked, a vexed question (Memoir prefixed to The Work of Christ, London, 1938, p. xxvi). His contemporary, James Denney, for instance, felt that the peculiarity of his style was such “that only people who agree with him strongly are likely to read him through” (Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson Nicoll, London, n.d., p. 97), though he also expressed the judgment (in 1908) that Forsyth “has more true and important things to say … than any one at present writing on theology” [op. cit., p. 118]. It is not that his style is clumsy or slipshod; indeed, there is no theologian more quotable than P. T. Forsyth. Words, however, fascinated and enthralled his mind to such an extent that it seems to have become almost second nature for him when taking up his pen to express himself in epigrams. Of course, a good epigram in itself is an excellent thing: it adds distinction to a theme and may serve to clarify a whole argument; and at the same time it cries out for quotation. But when arguments and even complete books are composed very largely of epigrams piled one on top of another it is hardly surprising if the reader, however willing, finds the fare offered him excessively rich and sweet, with the result that after a while his zest for the feast diminishes. Let him persevere, however, and he will be edified and enriched; for he would be much mistaken to conclude that Forsyth’s style had the effect, like a rich sauce, of covering over an impoverishment or superficiality of thought.

Not Always Evangelical

Forsyth did not hold the evangelical faith from the beginning. “With a great price have I procured its freedom,” he wrote [The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London, 1909), p. 255]. And in his Lyman Beecher Lectures he spoke as follows: “There was a time when I was interested in the first degree with purely scientific criticism.… It also pleased God by the revelation of His holiness and grace, which the great theologians taught me to find in the Bible, to bring home to me my sin in a way that submerged all the school questions in weight, urgency, and poignancy. I was turned from a Christian to a believer, from a lover of love to an object of grace. And so, whereas I first thought that what the Churches needed was enlightened instruction and liberal theology, I came to be sure that what they needed was evangelization” [Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, London, 1907, pp. 282f.]. While Forsyth’s theory of Scripture continued to be somewhat liberal, his use of it was strongly evangelical. He realized that criticism “is a good servant but a deadly master” [The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. 49].

The Gospel of grace he emphasized as “God’s act of redemption before it is man’s message of it.… Only as a Gospel done by God is it a Gospel spoken by man. It is a revelation only because it was first of all a reconciliation.… It is an objective power, a historic act and perennial energy of the holy love of God in Christ; decisive for humanity in time and eternity; and altering for ever the whole relation of the soul to God, as it may be rejected or believed” [Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, p. 6]. He discerned that “every great revival in the Church has gone with a new sense of Christ’s vicarious redemption” and that the Reformation was “the greatest of evangelical revivals” [Ibid., pp. 195, 37]. “I am afraid we must part with the idea that there is no narrowness in Christianity,” he declared on another occasion. “… The Gospel is as narrow as Christ, and Christ is as narrow as the Cross” [Missions in State and Church, London, 1908, pp. 201f.].

The Key To The Saviour

The Cross of Christ, as the focal and finishing point of redemption, was very rightly his major theme. Thus he wrote: “Only the redeemed Church, the Church that knows the forgiveness, has the key to the Saviour. His blessings are the key to His nature; they do not wait till the nature is first defined. No philosopher, as such, has the key, no theologian, no scholar, no critic; only the believer, only the true Church. And we have it where the evangelical experience has always found its forgiveness—in the Cross. Our faith begins with the historic Christ.… We begin, in principle if not in method, with Christ the crucified.… The prime doer in Christ’s Cross was God. Christ was God reconciling. He was God doing the very best for man, not man doing his very best before God. The former is evangelical Christianity, the latter is humanist Christianity” [The Cruciality of the Cross, London, 1948, p. 17]. Again: “You do not understand Christ till you understand His Cross.… It is only by understanding it that we escape from religion with no mind, and from religion which is all mind, from pietism with its lack of critical judgment, and from rationalism with its lack of everything else” (Ibid., p. 26). “Most of the failure to recognize the divine greatness of Christ,” he declared, “arises in the end from a moral failure to appreciate Him as personal Saviour; and that failure rises from a defect in the estimate of the sin from which He saves. A lofty ideal is not mighty to save.… The theology of such a Gospel opens only to a Church of broken and converted men. Only the saved have the real secret of the Saviour” [The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, pp. 73, 219].

Grace And Judgment

Forsyth had a clear recognition of the truth that the grace of God has full significance only in association with the judgment of God. “Do preach a Gospel where salvation is in real rapport with deep guilt and redemption with holy judgment,” he urged [Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, p. 154]. Indeed, he boldly proclaimed the Cross to be the seat of final judgment: “It does not avert the great last judgment, it is the action of that judgment.… The justified have the last judgment behind them” [Ibid., p. 347]. This dynamic evangelical perspective could do much to revitalize our prosecution of the Gospel task today. Let him expound the subject further: “The judgment at the end of history is only the corollary of the judgment at the centre of history.… The mainspring of missions is not the judgment that will fall, but the judgment that has fallen in the Cross.… The absolute ultimate judgment of the world took place in Christ’s death. There God spoke His last word—His last endless word. The last moral reality is there, the last standard, the last judgment. The last judgment is behind us. The true judgment-seat of Christ, where we must all appear, is the Cross.… There, too, the judgment of our sins fell once for all on the Holy One and the Just. The judgment Christ exercises stands on the judgment He endured. He assumes judgment because He absorbed it. Salvation and judgment are intertwined; they are not consecutive” [Missions in State and Church, pp. 16, 61f., 73].

Forsyth was an outspoken, though charitable, antagonist of the theology of liberalism, which he himself had once espoused. To it he opposed what he termed “positive” theology. Thus he affirmed: “The first feature of a positive Gospel is that it is a Gospel of pure, free grace to human sin. (And you will find that liberalism either begins or ends with ignoring sin or minimizing it.) The initiative rests entirely with God, and with a holy and injured God. On this article of grace the whole of Christianity turns.… A liberal theology has most to say of God’s love, a positive of God’s mercy. The one views God’s love chiefly in relation to human love, the other chiefly in relation to human sin. In relation to sin chiefly—because a positive Gospel is a revelation of holy love.… The liberal theology, as I am describing it, is fatal to the old faith.… It reduces mercy to a form of pity by abolishing the claim of holiness, the gravity of sin, and the action of an Atonement.… It makes the Cross not necessary but valuable; not central but supplemental; not creative but exhibitive; a demonstration but not a revelation; a reconciliation but not a redemption” [Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, pp. 211ff.]. Again: “The final tendency of ‘advanced theology’ is backwards. Like Moliere’s ghost, it has improved very much for the worse.… We cannot take the resurrection Gospel and leave the resurrection fact. So also with the Cross; and so with the Person of Christ.… We reduce the New Testament to a piece of tradition; and in so doing we surrender the protestant position to the catholic” [The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, pp. 133, 182, 103f.].

And in these days when it is theologically fashionable, not to say respectable (though meaningless in terms of scriptural reality), to distinguish between “the historic Jesus” and “the risen Christ,” designers of religious thought may with advantage be reminded of Forsyth’s pungent comment that “to divide up the personality, and detach the heavenly Christ from the earthly Jesus, is not a feat of criticism so much as a failure of religion, or an intellectual freak and a confession of unfaith” [ibid., p. 177].

A Plea For Theology

How relevant to our present theological climate also are his remarks on the prevalent depreciation of so-called “propositional” or “dogmatic” religion. “The prime need of religion today,” retaliated Forsyth, “is a theology. No religion can survive which does not know where it is. And current religion does not know where it is, and it hates to be made to ask. It hates theology.… When preachers denounce theology, or a Church despises it for literary or social charm, that is to sell the Cross to be a pendant at the neck of the handsome world. It is spiritual poverty and baldness, it is not the simplicity in Christ, to be sick of grace, judgment, atonement, and redemption” [The Cruciality of the Cross, pp. 27f.]. He referred incisively to “mere theological liberalism, which, in the effort to discard dogma, only substitutes philosophic dogma for theological” [Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, p. 248], and to “laborious scholars living at a date so remote as our own, working often with more psychological acumen than personal faith, and working under a bias against apostolic interpretation” [The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. 127].

The Church And Missions

Finally, Forsyth has important things to say about the missionary activity of the Christian Church. The quotations that follow are from his neglected but notable volume entitled Missions in State and Church: “What goes deepest to the conscience goes widest to the world. The more completely we feel sin to be condemned in the Cross the more power and commandment we have to carry the absolution to the ends of the earth.… You may always measure the value to yourselves of Christ’s Cross by your interest in missions. And it is a safe test of the Spirit’s presence in a Church.… One reason why the Church is too little missionary abroad is that it is not a missionary Church at home. It is established on good terms with its world instead of being a foreign mission from another.… The missionless Church betrays that it is a crossless Church; and it becomes a faithless Church, an unblest Church, a mere religious society, and finally, perhaps a mere cultured clique.… Missions are a debt on every Christian individual.… It is not optional to pay our debts.… The man who repudiates his debts is bankrupt; the Church that disavows missionary sympathy is bankrupt in evangelical grace and universal faith. The decay of evangelical faith is fatal to missions” [pp. 18, 19, 251, 254f.]. And I cannot forbear to quote from a delightfully satirical passage in the same book on “globe-trotter” creeds. “Have you not met that class of people called ‘globe-trotters?’ he asks. They have time and means, health, curiosity, and interest, easily excited. They travel much, some incessantly. Their world is a plexus of hotels connected by rails.… They have seen the outside of many lands, and cities, and men. Their creed has a certain breadth which they parade. It is as easy as it is broad.… As it is with these grievous people, so I say it is with the creeds that sacrifice everything to breadth, and are interested in all faiths alike. They do not send missions, they do not help missions. They are globe-trotter creeds, cosmopolitan but not universal. They are, in the world of mind and belief, what these rich tramps, these returned empties, are in the world of movement …” [pp. 209ff.].

Some Other Works

Of other works from Forsyth’s pen not referred to above mention may be made of The Church and the Sacraments, The Soul of Prayer, The Justification of God, Theology in Church and State, Faith, Freedom, and the Future, Socialism, the Church, and the Poor, and Rome, Reform, and Reaction. Had space permitted, much more might have been said about various aspects of his thought and activity. But sufficient has, I hope, been said and quoted to demonstrate something of the power, the penetration, and the originality of Forsyth’s mind, the depth of his faith, firmly anchored to the Cross of Christ, and the profit and stimulation which may be expected from the reading of his works. Through their writings it is always possible for us to sit at the feet of the great ones of the past, and that is a privilege to be highly prized.

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes is former secretary of the Church Society of the Church of England and former vice-president of Tyndale Hall in Bristol. He holds the B.D., M.A. and D.Litt. degrees. He is a frequent contributor to religious periodicals.