The kingdom of God is near.

Give and double your impact.

Ireland News: August 19, 1957

S. W. M

Sub-Christian

The Rev. Wesley McKinney, president of the Irish Methodist Church, informed the recent conference that the prevailing climate of opinion in Ireland is, at best, sub-Christian.

“The dominant religion of the greater part of Ireland,” he said, “is authoritarian and obscurantist. The ethical standards accepted are often denials of Christian truth and love.”

He added:

“The supreme task of Methodism everywhere is to make disciples and to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land.”

The Methodist Church in Ireland, like other religious bodies, is not divided by the political border.

Speakers at the Portstewart Convention in the North of Ireland included Dr. Alan Redpath, pastor of Moody Church, Chicago, and Dr. William Fitch, pastor of Knox Church, Toronto. This Convention is the largest of the “daughter” meetings of Keswick Convention scheduled for the middle of July.—S.W.M.

South America News: August 19, 1957

W.D.B.

Argentina Progress

A young Scotsman, John F. Thomson, preached a sermon in Spanish from the pulpit of the American Methodist Church at Buenos Aires in 1867. He probably did not realize that he was making history.

Ninety years later evangelicals from many different denominations and missions gathered on the anniversary to praise God for all that had been accomplished.

Evangelical forces in Argentina are much smaller than those in the sister republic, Brazil, but they are making themselves felt in the life of the nation. They number about 500,000 out of a population of nearly 20 million. The largest work, numerically, is probably that of the Plymouth Brethren, known in Argentina as “Free Brethren.” More than 200 assemblies are spread over the country. The Southern Baptists come second and the Methodists third. Many other groups are at work, among them some very vigorous Pentecostal churches.

Several restrictions imposed on Protestants by the Peron regime have been lifted by the present government. It is now possible to hold street meetings in many Argentine cities and the Gospel is once more preached by radio. The “Index of Non-Catholic Cults,” a Peron creation which put all evangelicals under police supervision, is dead and is to be abolished this year.

On the other hand 12 new Roman Catholic bishoprics have been created with the object of “strengthening those who are struggling against Protestantism, Communism and Secularism.”

—A.C.

Colombia Picture

Things looked brighter for Protestants in Colombia after the executive committee of the Evangelical Confederation obtained a friendly interview with a special commision named by the government to discuss and define the question of religious liberty.

The conversations were carried on in a spirit of sympathy and understanding. As a first step toward establishment of rights for the evangelical minority, the government spokesmen promised to restudy the directives on the subject issued by the ousted Rojas Pinilla regime.

At Barranca Bermeja, however, the Four-Square Gospel Church, largest Protestant congregation in Colombia, was again closed by order of government officials only two weeks after it had opened its doors for the first time in over a year.

Although the church boasts a membership of over 1,000 and is located in a bustling oil-refinery town, its right to existence is denied by government officials who claim that the terms of Colombia’s Concordat with the Vatican prohibits the gathering to worship in non-Roman Catholic churches when these gatherings are located in “mission territory”—large tracts of land, comprising three-fourths of the nation, turned over exclusively to the church of Rome for development.

To spearhead its “campaign against Communism and Protestantism in Latin America,” according to Vision magazine, the Vatican has decided to establish in Bogota a central episcopal office (CELAM) similar to the National Catholic Welfare Conference office in Washington, which will develop a common strategy and coordinate the activities of the bishops, the religious orders and the Latin American lay organizations.

“In Vatican circles, the progress of Protestantism in Latin America is considered to be alarming,” explains Vision, “and this is attributed to the acquisitive power of the dollar. Well-equipped Protestant schools, the widespread distribution of pamphlets and Protestant reading matter, the powerful Protestant missions and the possibility that future directors of these missions may study and be trained in Latin America itself, are the principal factors which contribute to the spread of Protestantism in Mexico, Central and South America.”

One major purpose of the new CELAM office will be to establish contact with Catholic populations abroad in an effort to bring into Latin America more priests and missionaries.

—W. D. R.

The Stadium Story

WORLD NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The following article, which appeared in many American newspapers, was written by George Burnham, news editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, after 100,000 overflowed mammoth Yankee Stadium in New York to hear Billy Graham. It offers an insight to the aerial picture of the great throng.

The centerfield sign at Yankee Stadium read, “Say Seagram and be sure.”

Directly behind home plate was a banner, “Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Jammed between the two viewpoints were 100,000 people—the largest crowd ever to attend any event in “The House that (Babe) Ruth built” in 1923. An estimated 20,000 were turned away after standees filled the outfield area. (The largest religious gathering in the United States previously had been the 75,000 who heard Billy Graham at the Cotton Bowl during his Dallas. Texas, campaign.

The wide-open spaces, usually covered by the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle were covered by the Smiths and Joneses from Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Jersey City.

It was the hottest night of the year, with reporters in the dugouts perspiring more than Casey Stengel during a ninth-inning rally. Seventy persons were treated for heat exhaustion. Over 2,500 ushers did a magnificent job of keeping confusion to a minimum.

Shortly before 7 p.m. a wave of applause began rippling across the stands and grew into a mighty sound. Walking side by side toward the platform at second base were Billy Graham and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. They were trailed by guards, friends and a few who sneaked in under the blanket of applause.

The Vice President, during the short walk, remarked to Graham that it must bring a great satisfaction to attract the largest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium.

“I didn’t fill this place,” Graham replied, “God did it.”

In the opening moments of the program the 100,000 voices joined in praying the Lord’s Prayer. Later another mighty sound rolled across the surrounding blocks as the huge crowd sang “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.”

It seemed impossible that complete quietness could come to such a throng, but it did as George Beverly Shea and the 4,000-voice choir, superbly led by Cliff Barrows, sang “How Great Thou Art.”

Roger Hull, chairman of the executive committee, announced that the Crusade, scheduled to end July 20 at Yankee Stadium, was continuing at Madison Square Garden for three weeks. A great burst of applause warmed the words. (Because of unprecedented attendance and results, the Crusade later was extended through August 31.)

After moving his eyes slowly around the vast expanses, Graham said in his opening remarks:

“They said Yankee Stadium wouldn’t be filled. But it is. God has done this and all the honor, credit and glory must go to him. You can destroy my ministry by praising me for this. The Bible says God will not share his glory with another.”

Mr. Nixon, who was given a standing ovation, said:

“I bring you a message from one who is a very good friend of Billy Graham and one who would have been here if his duties had allowed him—the greetings and best wishes of President Eisenhower.”

“America,” he said, “is a great nation because of its faith in God.”

Noises from planes taking off from LaGuardia Field drowned out some of the early parts of the program. A telephone call to the airport brought quick results. The tower instructed all pilots to turn away from Yankee Stadium.

Graham, citing the perils of Communism from without and moral deterioration from within, said, “I believe there is a glorious hope. There is only one solution for our collective problems that can guarantee the survival of America and its continued prosperity. Jesus Christ is the only answer.”

Clutching his familiar Bible, he gave the listeners a choice between heaven and hell. “You make the choice by accepting or rejecting the Son of God, Jesus Christ. There is no middle ground.”

With no room for people to walk to the platform, he asked all who would accept Christ to stand. An estimated 2,500 did so.

One man had made his decision before the address began. Posing as an usher, he collected about $500 in the bleachers when the offering was given. He was caught and arrested. (Graham attended the official hearing a few days later and, in love, offered him the riches of Christ. The man rebuffed Graham and refused Christ. Then the evangelist went another mile. He gave the man a job.)

Worth Quoting

“It has been three years since the London campaign of Dr. Billy Graham. The greatest impact, now emerging, has been upon the clergy.”—The Right Rev. Hugh Roland Gough, Bishop of Barking.

“The Billy Graham campaigns in Great Britain left thousands of new Christians and gave new faith to thousands of clergymen, but scores of applicants to theological schools in Britain are coming directly or indirectly as a result of the Graham campaigns.”—Dr. A. W. Goodwin Hudson, Vicar of All Saints Church.

“Liberal Protestantism is critical of Dr. (Billy) Graham because of his success with New Testament evangelism in which it disbelieves and not because there is anything intrinsically harmful about a bulk response to Christian evangelism. If hundreds of converts nightly were led to Christ by Dr. Graham through personal counseling, rather than through mass evangelism, it would still criticize him.”—Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in newspaper reply to non-lasting charges against Graham converts by Harold E. Fey, editor of The Christian Century.

Evaluation

Erling Olsen, president of a Wall Street investment firm and member of the Billy Graham New York Crusade executive committee, wrote the following evaluation of the Crusade:

The most protracted political convention ever held in our country, in which a party sought to nominate its candidate for President, took place in the summer of 1924 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In all, 29 sessions were held over a period of 16 days. It was not until the one hundred and third ballot that a compromise candidate, John W. Davis, received sufficient votes to become the standard bearer of the Democratic party in that campaign. Who will forget the voice of the chairman of the Alabama delegation as he stentorially intoned with regularity as each ballot was taken, “Alabama casts its 24 votes for Underwood”? That convention was only one of the many historic events in that arena to attract wide public attention. But no event in its long history compares with the Billy Graham New York Crusade which began its opening session on May 15 and is still going strong, having already shattered all records for continuity and attendance in the Garden. The walls of that arena have recorded times without number the crisp, bell-like tones of the evangelist as he peals forth his famous phrase, “the Bible says.…”

But the length of the evangelistic crusade, rapidly approaching in duration the initial stage of Paul’s great ministry in Ephesus, is only one of the many amazing things challenging the minds and hearts of Christians everywhere. Has any event within the memory of living men or, for that matter, in all history been the target for such concerted, concentrated prayer for God’s blessing? No one can sit in the Garden night after night, seeing that steady stream of people from all walks of life and age groups respond to the invitation to make a “decision for Christ,” without thanking God that a voice is being heard resembling in effectiveness the apostolic preachers calling men to “repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus.” For years there has been a yearning in the writer’s heart that God would anoint a man of his own choosing whose voice would be heard across the land over and above all other voices, calling men to Christ. That prayer has been answered!

A widely-known theologian has charged that the Gospel Billy Graham preaches is a “bargain.” I do not know if the gentleman has been present at any service during the Crusade, but he is mistaken. I have heard gospel preaching by evangelists, ministers and Bible teachers, and have myself actively engaged, as a layman, in preaching efforts. If any criticism can be made of the message that Billy Graham preaches nightly, it certainly is not that he is offering a “bargain.” Rather it is that Billy Graham has almost obliterated the distinction between discipleship and sonship. This is the opposite of a “bargain.” It is a demand for a “commitment to Christ” as well as faith in the Saviour. But was it not a high price our Lord demanded of the multitude which followed him after he broke up a Sabbath day’s social engagement in the house of one of the chief Pharisees and which drew publicans and sinners near unto him for to hear him (Luke 14:25–15:1)?

What have we seen the past two and a half months? First, we have seen opposition from both liberals and evangelicals against the evangelist’s coming to New York melt away (except in the case of diehards on both sides) under the evident outpouring of God’s Spirit. More than once I have sat in the Garden listening to the Gospel preached powerfully and clearly and watching streams of people come forward without the use of any of the pleading and “tricks” used by evangelists to get response, and wished it were possible for Graham’s critics to sit where I sat and see what I saw. I have looked over the counselling room and have seen hundreds of devoted men and women seeking nightly to aid inquirers to more definite assurance of faith and thanked God for what I was witnessing. Many a time I have said, “Would that men I have known and loved, whose devotion to the Gospel was the chief characteristic of their lives, could have seen what I saw.” How the hearts of men like Dr. Houghton, Dr. Ironside and that father of Gospel missions, Mel Trotter, would have welled up with praise.

It was by divine guidance that the contract made with Madison Square Garden for the rental of that arena not only committed the Garden authorities and our committee for a six week’s period starting with May 15, but included an option to continue until Labor Day if we chose. Under the impact of the meetings all were agreed that an extension was in order. The first was until July 20; the second, until August 10, and now the third and final extension, until the Labor Day weekend. Someone asked me, “Do you think the Crusade will go on until January 1st?”

Following the initial response of the opening weeks a slight letdown was experienced. Some who saw and sensed the power of God in other crusades felt at that time the Crusade was not having the same effect upon New York City compared with those held, say, in Glasgow and London. But suddenly (I believe in response to concerted prayer) the tide of God’s blessing began to rise, so that, to use the Psalmist’s language, our “cup runneth over.”

Some New Yorkers thought six weeks of nightly gospel preaching, beginning at a time when folk start thinking of vacations and the churches were closing their active year, would be untimely and too long. Already in June the churches curtail their activities; ministers and members alike plan their vacations. But what have we seen in New York? Crowds hungry to hear the Gospel—men and women seeking Christ in vast numbers. Extending the Crusade, with the necessity to adjust vacation schedules, work schedules, etc., seemed insurmountable. The budget was a hurdle challenging the committee, but the promise, “Your young men shall see visions” and “old men dream dreams” (middle-aged partake of both) became a reality. Undertaking the telecasts of the Saturday night services—through which more people at one given time saw and heard the Gospel preached than at any prior period in history—presented a budget item that made Mt. Everest appear like an ant hill. But God has supplied the need. His people have responded generously, as they always do when God works.

Surely the evidence that professing Christians from all backgrounds and denominations can work together in a common purpose of presenting Christ to the unsaved will long be remembered as one of the mighty accomplishments of this campaign.

These are just a few of the many blessings which New Yorkers and the whole country have witnessed and for which Christians everywhere give thanks.

Gideon Convention

Gideons International elected the following officers at the 58th annual convention held recently in Minneapolis, Minn.:

P. J. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Mich., president; Howard Armerding, Lynnfield, Mass., vice president; Philip Lind, Hinsdale, Ill., treasurer; AxelFredeen, Bellevue, Wash., chaplain.

More than 1,400 attended the fellowship dinner, marked by a larger attendance of ministers than at any previous convention.

Greetings and reports were received from Albert Stedelbauer, president of Gideons International of Canada; N. Medina Estrada, president of the Gideons of Mexico; M. Angelotus, secretary of Athens, Greece camp, and M. Lu, member from Taipei, Formosa.

The convention will be held in Louisville, Ky., next year and at Dallas, Texas, in 1959.

Booksellers Meet

Christian Booksellers from the United States and Canada meet in Chicago this week for the eighth annual convention.

Among the speakers will be Mrs. Marjorie Saint, widow of Nate Saint, one of the Auca-martyred missionaries; Clyde Narramore, psychologist, author of books for young people; P. J. Zondervan, president of Gideons International and Stanley Tam, business leader of Lima, Ohio.

Theme for the five-day meeting: “Enthusiasm is Knowledge on Fire.”

R. Gordon Mitchell of Toronto is president of the Christian Booksellers Association.

Eutychus and His Kin: August 19, 1957

BIG AND LITTLE

Ever since skyscrapers began to pile up in New York, bigger and better have been synonyms for bigtime advertising. Giant, colossal, king-sized, mammoth products fill our supermarkets. In the buildup only these words have been cut down. When the man in the ad declares, “I like my pleasures big!” he seems to mean that he prefers large parties, big yachts and huge trailers, and a cigarette about a half inch longer.

The Brobdingnagian trend is clear enough, however, to anyone who tries to fit a giant box of cereal on a kitchen shelf or a new car into the garage. The motorist who surveys hundreds of long, long automobiles jammed bumper to bumper on a superhighway like dinosaurs in a mudhole may even speculate on the fate of Henry Ford’s thunder-lizard.

The answer of course is miniaturization. Lilliputians and transistors are providing us with pocket radios, wrist cameras and scooter cars. The transition may be uncomfortable as we crawl into knee-high racers, but our products come in two sizes only: midget and mammoth. In religion, too, Americans like superlative extremes—miniature chapels or towering cathedrals. One of the problems facing mass evangelism is its fascination for people who like their religion big—and find a church of average size with a preacher of ordinary gifts altogether uninspiring. Our universe is a harmony of atoms and galaxies, but we are not made to live on either scale. Two or three Christians may know the Lord’s presence even as a stadium rally may taste his blessing, but neither group is a normal size for a functioning Christian congregation.

Many Americans crave a big church because their God is too small. The superlatives of the Gospel are things which are not seen, and eternal. For our daily Christian life and work we need the family size.

EUTYCHUS

DEWEY AND ETHICS

The excellent article by the late Professor DeBoer concerning “John Dewey and the American Spirit” in your May 27 issue is of great interest. I would like to put into the record a statement that Dr. Dewey made in my house once when he was visiting me during the years that I was a missionary in China.

Nobody knew who he was when he got out there except the people who had studied under him at Columbia. There were numbered among them a good many missionaries (although I know of none of them that accepted his philosophy). A number of these persons were invited to my home to spend the evening with Dr. Dewey. In the course of the evening he said, in almost these exact words, “Until I had lived in a country where Christianity is relatively little known and has had very few generations of influence upon the character of the people, I had always assumed, as natural reactions which one could expect of any normal human being in a given situation, reactions which I now discover you only find among the people that have been exposed many generations to the influence of the Christian ethic.”

This has a very direct bearing upon the sentence which I find toward the end of Dr. DeBoer’s article, “Professor Dewey seems to have taken for granted that the common decency he himself adhered to by reason of the after-shine of a Puritan ancestry could be regarded as a ubiquitous feature of human nature as the result of evolution.” Evidently he had his doubts about this although I sought in vain for any evidence in his writings of the misgivings which he voiced to us in China in 1922.

HENRY SMITH LEIPER

Exec. Sec.

Missions Council

Congregational Christian Churches

New York City

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

I am much elated that your contributors have evaluated the RSV so accurately. It is a good pastor’s tool, but hardly the thing for general circulation in its present form. I like Dr. Ladd’s statement in the July 8 issue, “These illustrations suffice to demonstrate that RSV has an unhappy tendency to seek novelty for its own sake … the New Testament of the RSV is liable to serious criticism, and has not yet provided us with a completely adequate version.…” That is about as tender an indictment of the RSV as I have seen, yet it is both logical and positive.

M. R. PUTNAM

Scotts Methodist Church

Scotts, Mich.

I have just finished reading the articles on the RSV (July 8 issue). At first glance they appeared to be related appraisals of RSV with one covering the Old Testament specifically and the other the New. However, I found the former a condemnation of RSV and its translators ostensibly based upon selected portions of the Old Testament while the New Testament articles seemed to indicate general approval (at least of the RSV New Testament).

It is interesting to note that both appeal to the same principles in support of their position. Professor Allis criticizes RSV for its lack of consistency in that it translates two identical constructions in different ways (Gen. 1:8, 10). Professor Ladd praises RSV because it is more consistent than KJV as illustrated by its translation of aion. Allis charges RSV with paraphrasing instead of translating while on the next page Ladd is insisting that even though literalness is often impossible RSV is in many places more literal than KJV. Ladd says RSV often has a “higher theology” than KJV or ASV citing Luke 6:17 and 2 Timothy 3:16; Allis refers to Isaiah 7:14 to prove the very opposite suggesting that anything less than “virgin” here requires a revision of the traditional views of inspiration at Matthew 1:23.

I recognize that one could simply declare that both men are completely right; the RSV Old Testament is poor and the New Testament good. Some have said this and I suppose it is entirely possible that one could be a better translation than the other. Yet I am distressed by the fact that after all the references to Hebrew and Greek are in, it appears that they are only window dressing. Professor Allis’ real concern as expressed in the closing paragraph (and in a disguised form in the opening one) seems to be the preservation of KJV (or Authorized version as he calls it) because of its beautiful style while Ladd seems to feel that the important thing is an accurate translation of the Word of God into a language men can understand.

Frankly, I agree with Dr. Ladd’s philosophy and reject the viewpoint which insists that KJV is the final standard by which all English translations must be measured. Certainly RSV has its shortcomings; one doesn’t have to know much Greek or Hebrew to discover that. Like KJV it is still a translation and neither can claim inspiration in the sense of the originals. Yet in this humble preacher’s opinion there is far more danger of religious indifference in a rigid insistence upon KJV only than of theological incorrectness through daily reading of RSV.

JOHN M. LEGGETT, JR.

Haller Lake Baptist Church

Seattle, Wash.

Thank you for the interesting and contrasting views of the RSV set forth in your recent issue. Permit me to remark that I remain unconvinced by the defense of the RSV New Testament, and allow me to comment on one passage there treated, namely Acts 9:5 f.

When one studies the conversion of Paul, he sees that it fits into the pattern of the other biblical theophanies. Indeed, the Greek verb from which we form this word is used of it several times (Acts 9:17; 26:16; 1 Cor. 15:8). Now the first thing that is evident in all of the theophanies is their supernaturalness, or the glory of God therein revealed. “The God of Glory appeared unto our Father Abraham.” “Mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” “The place is holy ground.” “My glory passeth by.” “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.” “I am God Almighty.” Even so in this case, there appears a light from heaven, above the brightness of the midday sun so that Saul could not see for the glory of that light (Acts 9:3; 26:13, 22:11). As in a number of the other theophanies it is God who is first revealed before he makes his Name known. This is particularly true in the revelations to Moses in Exodus 4 and Exodus 33–34, as to John on Patmos, Rev. 1:11 f and to Stephen as he was being stoned, Acts 7:55. The last named saw “the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” So in Paul’s conversion it is specifically stated that he recognized the Lord before he was told that the Lord was Jesus (Acts 9:5; 22:8, 26:15; cf. also 9:17; 22:14). Here as elsewhere in other theophanies the recipient of the revelation first learned that it was God or the Lord and later sought and was given the name of God.

Moreover, in every theophany the recipient is bowed before the Lord in reverence. He worships, falls on his knees, or falls on his face before the LORD (Gen. 17:3; Ex. 3:5–6; 34:8; Josh. 5:14–17; Isa. 6:5; Rev. 1:17). Likewise in this case we are told that Saul or his whole group fell to the earth before the glory of the light of the Lord (Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14). It is in this setting that Saul replies, “Who art Thou, Lord?” Here Lord is the subject and the question is answered by the Lord giving Jesus as the predicate. Saul is fallen to the ground in reverence and worship, he is blinded by the light. Is it likely that under the circumstances he got familiar with God and called him by a pronoun that is used for men? Such an interpretation does violence to all that we know of Paul and all analogies from other biblical theophanies. Of course, the language of this encounter was not English, but “the Hebrew tongue,” Acts 26:14. Whether Saul used the old Hebrew of the Bible or the popular Hebrew or Aramaic of his day, he first realized that it was the LORD of the Old Testament who had stopped him, and then he was told by this Hebrew-speaking Lord that he is Jesus of Nazareth.

No doubt Saul was wrong when he entered that journey to Damascus breathing out slaughter and threatenings, kicking against the goads. If one wishes to call this confusion, there is no great objection. But “the entrance of Thy Word giveth light.” From the moment God appeared in the blinding light the confusion began to disappear. The Word of the Lord removed the ambiguity of Saul’s thinking and marked out the path for the Apostle.

With fraternal regards for you and for the writer of the “RSV Appraisal: The New Testament.”

WM. C. ROBINSON

Columbia Theological Seminary

Decatur, Ga.

SUPREME COURT AND RACE

With most of Prof. Barnette’s statements (“What Can Southern Baptists Do?” June 24 issue) no honest and ordinarily well-informed Christian Southerner could find any fault. But he starts off with an utterly mistaken premise … that “Southern Baptist pastors … have the conviction that the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate the public schools is in harmony with both Christian and democratic principles.” Ninety-nine-plus percent, I feel certain, of all Southern Baptist ministers would repudiate the idea that the Supreme Court was advancing the cause of Christianity when it assumed the role of an arbiter in a dispute which involves principles of sociology quite as much as questions of ethics.

Barnette naively states, “Where there are cases of discrimination against children, the Supreme Court has decreed that our public schools must be desegregated”; when of course the Court’s decree includes no such limitation.… Desegregation applied to public transportation and public eating places is one thing; but applied to the association of children indiscriminately with other children from all sorts and classes of homes, is quite something else.…

H. E. PORTER

Greenville, S. C.

GRAHAM AND THE POPE

The reasons you give for believing “that America is gradually becoming an R. C. country” are valid—but might it all be summed up in: nature abhors a vacuum?

FR. G. SMITH

San Francisco, Calif.

Keep your eye on that Catholic Senator from Massachusetts. He’s one of the Catholic church’s main men in Congress.…

THOMAS E. MORRISON

Decatur, Ill.

Let people who doubt Rome’s evil intentions and cruel methods take a trip to French Quebec or Mexico or study the conditions in Colombia or Spain … to observe the unbridled Catholic church in action.…

IRVIN JOHNSON

Tampa, Fla.

What I want to know is why non-Catholics pull their punches …? In all my readings the Roman church never pulls a punch but hits straight from the shoulder and sometimes below the belt.…

WILL H. JOCKELL

Anchorage, Ky.

It is all very well to be Protestant and anti-Papal, but when you become anti-Catholic, then I must, as a member of the Anglican Communion, part company with you.…

ROY F. SCHIPPLING

Church of the Good Shepherd

Hemet, Calif.

The real power of Rome does not reside in the Knights of Columbus, nor in the papal throne in the Vatican, nor in its lobbying among U. S. senators, but rather in the fact that it controls the child (body, soul, mind, intellect) from the cradle to the grave; in other words, in its parish school system, its high schools, colleges and universities.…

F. A. KOLCH

Highland Park, Mich.

The article “Billy Graham and the Pope’s Legions” I interpret as an unjustified slur on “the necessity of baptism.” It stated … Father Kelly … must cry, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, plus the necessity of baptism,” etc.… We do not believe in the absolute necessity of baptism, as though a person cannot be saved without being baptized. But we do believe that baptism is an indispensable part of Christ’s command and therefore may not be regarded as unessential.…

V. EUGENE JOHNSON

Benton Lutheran Church

Crooks, S. D.

I like the way Billy is doing it better than the way his critics are not doing it.

FRED A. FELS, JR.

Panorama Baptist Church

Pacoima, Calif.

THE WELFARE STATE

I hesitate to take issue with Dr. Joseph M. Dawson for whom I have great admiration. But it seems to me that when he writes about “The Christian View of the State” (Christianity Today, June 24, 1957), he does not always understand the full import of what it is he recommends. He closes his article with a sentence, “ ‘What does it do to man?’ is the validating question to ask of any government.” I agree. Several paragraphs earlier he attempts to translate into particulars the point of view expressed by the World Council of Churches at Evanston. When he does so, he lists the familiar features of the modern state: social security, funds for veterans, housing, agricultural subsidies, regulation of public carriers, and so on.

One need not question the benevolent impulses which can be mustered behind every one of these proposals. But we do need an accurate statement of what each of them involves in order to know what it is we are judging in terms of our scale of values. Modern life has exposed men to new kinds of uncertainties, and so they have yielded easily to the suggestion that a vast extension of political activity will give them the assurances they crave. But as government has gradually extended its sway over domains once regarded as private, that assurance has not come. Instead, people are more jittery than before, and with excellent reason.

To select the first item on the list, we might ask, “What does social security do to people?” This federal program does not stand in isolation; it is a facet of a widely accepted philosophy of government. All modern political welfare schemes rest on the premise that a government may rightfully assume major control over the property of its citizens. This is virtually equivalent to saying that the citizen holds title to his earnings at the sufferance of government and only to the remainder after government has garnisheed whatever portion of his wages it decrees. To put it bluntly, the federal social security program imposes a payroll tax which bears most heavily on those least able to pay; and, to avoid the resistance which would result if such a tax were levied openly, the program takes its cut out of wages before the earner even sees them.

These are unsavory considerations to surround a political program which purports to be a “governmental extension of love,” but this is not all. The federal program of social security is compulsory, except for a few occupational groups. The man who, however mistaken we might deem him, decides that he can take care of his old age better than government can take care of his old age for him, is not allowed to carry out his plans. He is forced to accept the plans thrust on him by the will of the majority. What becomes of the rights of the individual conscience in such cases as these?

I know it will be said that this is too trivial a matter to waste any powder on, that if some ignorant, stubborn fellow doesn’t know what’s good for him he has to be taught somehow. To which two rejoinders might be made. First, let us not dignify this hard-headed, expedient reaction by giving it the sanction of our religion. Secondly, listen to the words of an anonymous editor of last century. We “no more see a crushing tyranny in a trivial unfairness or a ludicrous indignity, than the eye uninformed by reason can discern the oak in the acorn.… Hence the necessity of denouncing with unwearied and even troublesome perseverance a single act of oppression.”

EDMUND A. OPITZ

Foundation for Economic Education

Irvington-on-the-Hudson, New York

LIBERAL OR EVANGELICAL

Fosdick’s appreciation of fundamentalism far outshines your unwarranted attack on his convictions. That light will continue to guide many a storm-tossed theological neophyte for generations to come.…

ALLEN H. GATES

First Cong. Church

Chesterfield, Mass.

In discussing Modernism, Barthianism, Neo-Orthodoxy and “way-stations” you are objective, careful with facts and respectful towards the adherents of such errors.… Is it necessary … to manifest opposite characteristics in discussing Fundamentalism?…

MILTON E. FISH

Long Beach, Calif.

Your articles “Dare We Renew the Controversy” are not only relevant and penetrating, but are in the finest tradition of Christian love and wisdom.

A. F. BALLBACH JR.

First Baptist Church

Oneonta, N. Y.

Back here in the sticks we haven’t yet received word that the war is over. We are still fighting.… C’mon down from your ivory tower and into the field of battle; the fighting is fine!

JAMES MACKENZIE

The Presbyterian Church

Edenton, N. C.

The question at heart is, simply enough, … dare truth still refute error; or better still, shall we still “resist the devil.” … Why you should … give publicity to such as Barth and Brunner … is hard to understand. Really what good are these and such like men to the Church?

Galway, N. Y.

JOHN H. GREENING

When was Satan cast into the Lake of Fire and the ages of the ages begun?… Flora, Ind.

JOHN W. EVANS JR.

We need no longer to “revive the conflict”; only promote the gospel.…

KENNETH W. PAUL

Asst. to the Chaplain

Central Louisiana State Hospital

Pineville, La.

The largeness of your point of view is in striking contrast to the narrowness of organized Fundamentalism.…

HAROLD PAUL SLOAN

Browns Mills, N. J.

I write … in view of the excellency and timeliness of your great article on the … modernist-fundamentalist conflict. The sanity and wisdom of this article commends itself to every thoughtful person, especially those … familiar with the history of the movements concerned.…

ROBERT H. MERCER

St. George’s P.E. Church

Pawtucket, R. I.

Your “Dare We Renew the Controversy?” is refreshing to my mind.…

LISTON L. MAY

Simpson Bible College

San Francisco, Calif.

IS THE STATE SECULAR?

In your article by Dr. Joseph M. Dawson (June 24 issue) we find him discussing “The purely religious nature of the church and the essentially secular functions of the state.” One is not surprised to find that Dr. Dawson is a devout follower of Roger Williams. It is a serious falsification to call a state “secular” which began with “a decent respect of nature’s God” and ever declares itself “under God” and “in God we trust”; which inaugurates its President with prayers; which prays in all its legislatures and includes the Bible in the schools of 36 states, and sends chaplains everywhere with its armed forces and gives thanks to God for all its blessings.

A state can be “secular.” The French Constitution begins, The Republic of France is secular. That is their choice. We don’t want it.

Dr. Dawson concludes: “Democracy recognizes that man’s personality is the highest value in the universe.” Mr. Editor, you must have expected a challenge to that!

FRANK DYER

Santa Monica, Calif.

First we drag in religion by the horns into public and semi-public functions, some supported by taxes from people of all and of no religious faiths. Then, to be “fair” we give every religious leader in town—again, of every shade—a turn at officiating. Now somebody objects (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, June 10, p. 30) because some preacher, priest, rabbi or reader expresses his honest convictions in an audible prayer before such a group. What about the people who have to listen … and are expected to join in such a prayer?… Must the humanist sit still while a preacher talks about the hereafter or the professed atheist remain quiet while a religionist appeals to some deity? Must the Protestant say “Amen” to a prayer addressed to Mary … and the Unitarian likewise to a Trinitarian prayer?

The whole thing started when we separated religion and education as if that is a corollary to the separation of church and state. These confusing situations will end only when we integrate religion and education as all other peoples have always done and as America did until about a century ago.…

KARL F. BREEHNE

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church

Greenville, Ill.

TIME AND TIDE

I appreciate many of the good things which come out of the New World, but its theology is not one of them …

PETER F. R. REES

St. Peter’s Vicarage

Haslingden, Rossendale

Langs, England

I receive your publication regularly and I regularly throw it away without removing the wrapper.…

NELSON P. MOYER

Homer Methodist Church

Homer, Alaska

… A devilish and unchristian thing.… devilish, hellish blindness and ignorance.

N. S. ANDERSON

United Church of Canada

Maidstone, Ontario

… Greatly appreciate the service that you are rendering in this day of confusion …

WILLIAM F. DINKINS

Selma, Ala.

Not in the 58 years of my ministry have I experienced a greater thrill in reading a religious paper …

J. B. HUNLEY

Olive Branch Christian Church

Toano, Va.

I keep on saying to myself, This is good writing, vital, and spiritually valuable … Rectory, Stanford-on-Soar

J. ROBERTS

Loughborough, Leics, England

Enclosed is my $5—not because I believe in your point of view but because you are showing so much better spirit than is usually shown by your school of thought.

J. RICHMOND MORGAN

First Congregational Church

Peru, Ill.

… I must confess that after a first, suspecting and searching look at the journal it began to grow upon me. I read the copies from cover to cover—and now I am under moral obligation. So here is my $5 …

ARNOLD F. KELLER

Church of the Redeemer

Utica, N. Y.

Quite frankly I at first tossed the copies into the waste basket. One issue, however, I read, and I have been reading them all ever since … What a joy it is to read your full-bodied defence and preaching of the Gospel …

H. D. GASSON

Church of St. John the Baptist

Sanbornville, N. H.

Your magazine is superb. I have been looking for such a publication for years.

R. W. DURNAL

Azusa, Calif.

Welcome as a summer breeze, and just as refreshing.… After being exposed to liberalism …, first in college, and since in many of the so-called “religious magazines” … it is truly a delightful experience to be able to read a magazine which is truly Christian.…

C. LEE BIRDSALL

Beach, N. D.

A note of appreciation for your excellent periodical.… I think the term “scholarly orthodoxy” is an apt one in describing the tone.… I am a junior medical student and find much in your pages to encourage me as I attempt to bear a clear and reasonable witness.…

RICHARD B. STUART

Ohio State University

Columbus, Ohio

Funny, These Chinese

Paul Harvey

If we learn something about the Chinese, we might learn something from them.

Ninety percent of all the Chinese who have emigrated to other lands come from two provinces. Nine-tenths of all the Chinese in America hail from one county in Kwangtung Province.

Two reasons: Economic conditions on the South China coast have caused these to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Also South Chinese are generally more adventurous, more willing to explore.

In these migratory Chinese, whether you find them in Chinatown of San Francisco, New York, Chicago or scattered through our states, there has been preserved an amazing law enforcement record.

No Delinquency

In the United States there has never been arrested a chronic delinquent child of Chinese parents.

That’s a pretty impressive statement when you realize that five percent of America’s juveniles will be in trouble with the law this year. Not one Chinese.

In the United States there has never been a Chinese convicted for rape, burglary, bank robbery or desertion.

In the half-century history of Chicago’s Chinatown (population 5,000) there has been only one arrest of a Chinese for breaking-and-entering.

Why?

How has this race managed so well to check-rein the impulses of its vigorous young people, even after they’ve been subject for generations to western influences?

Parental Respect

“They just naturally respect and obey their parents,” says Wilson Moy, “Mayor” of Chicago’s Chinatown.

“Mr. Harvey, every writer who gets involved in the subject of delinquency comes to see me, as you have done. Each one asks me the same question, ‘How do you do it?’ I always must say that I sincerely don’t know. Our Chinese youth just naturally respect and obey their parents.”

P. H. Chang, Chinese Consul-General in New York City, tries to explain. “Filial piety is a cardinal virtue my people have brought over from China that was once free.”

How strange, if such a simple and obvious “home remedy” as this helps explain the fact that not one of New York City’s estimated ten thousand Chinese-American teenagers has ever been brought into court for depredation, narcotics, speeding, burglary, vandalism, stick-up, purse-snatching, or mugging. Not even speeding!

Funny, these Chinese.

Paul Harvey was still in knickers and not yet 16 when he made his first radio announcements. After World War II, in which he served as Director of News and Information for the Office of War Information in Michigan and Indiana, his rise to radio fame was meteoric. One station alone received 10,000 requests for his obituary of President Roosevelt, which started, “A great tree has fallen.…” Monday through Friday he is heard over the American Broadcasting Company at 12 noon, CST.

Saturday Night

Paul S. James

Saturday night in the Baptist parsonage home of our childhood is well remembered for its familiar sights and sounds and smells.

I can still see the lamp with the green shade on father’s desk in the study, by the light of which he spent several hours each Saturday night going over the notes of his Sunday morning sermon. He wrote his sermons in full, following the advice of Dr. Augustus H. Strong who told the men in Rochester Seminary to write their sermons for the first twenty years and then do whatever they pleased about it. After writing his sermons, father made brief notes on them, which he underlined carefully in preparation for taking them into the pulpit.

Mother had her Saturday night duties too—special duties in preparation for the Lord’s Day. She sewed buttons on Sunday clothes and put a pot roast on the stove to get it ready for the morrow. There would be no coming home early Sunday noon to fix the Sunday dinner; the preacher’s wife must have it as nearly ready as possible before she left for the house of God. I can smell the fragrance of that roast now, mingled with the sharper odor of the freshly blacked shoes for all of us.

Yes, Saturday night in our home was dedicated to Bible, bath and bed. Everything pointed to the special day that would soon be here—the Lord’s Day. We didn’t go out on Saturday night. Like the Jews, our Sabbath began at sundown.

The result was achieved. We never thought of Saturday night as the high point of the week; the high-water mark was Sunday. Saturday night was a night of preparation to make ready for God’s holy day.

Sunday morning did not find us rousing reluctantly, to go to church wearily and sit through the sermon sleepily. Sunday morning found us refreshed and ready. This was it—“day of all the week the best.” Our enthusiasms had not been dissipated the night before. There was a zeal in our souls because we had made the right sort of spiritual, mental and physical preparation.

We were brought up not to spend Saturday night for the Devil, giving the Lord whatever tag end of our interest might be left over to the next day. It dishonors God to be handed leftovers.

Has the old fashioned, Christian sort of Saturday night gone with the wind? In many places, yes. Across America it is the night when folks paint the town red. The country is on one wild spree and the rising sun of a beautiful Lord’s Day morning finds people in bed, with big heads, sleeping off hangovers of one kind or another. They enter the day in sin—how can it be a day of blessing for them?

But your home and my home may still be houses of God where the holy hush is upon the souls of the members of the family as the shadows of Saturday evening lengthen, bringing fresh assurance of the presence of him whom we serve.

END

Dr. Paul S. James is Pastor of The Baptist Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ideas

The Sacred Life of the Church

The Editors

What is the sacred life of the Church? One word answers the question: Christ—the risen Lord Jesus Christ—is himself the Church’s life. St. Paul’s phrase in Colossians, “Christ who is our life” (Col. 3:4), applies to believers corporately as well as personally. For all of us in the Church, Christ is no less our life than he is our life as individuals. This is axiomatic for any discussion of the Church’s continuing vitality.

The affirmation that the sacred life of the Church is Christ opens up spacious vistas of truth. It transcends all lesser ecclesiastical dimensions. In respect to its life, the Church is not the body of Peter or Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Wesley, or any other human leader. It is the body of Jesus Christ the Lord who “loved the church and gave himself for it” (Eph. 5:25–27).

This being the case, anything, no matter how worthy in itself, that diverts the Church from Christ impairs its sacred life. So long as the Lord himself is central in the worship, witness, and service of the Church, its life is strong and healthy. To the extent that the Church is in living, spiritual union with the risen Lord—and only to that extent—does it bear fruit (John 15:5).

Whether the Church should maintain a lofty Christology in harmony with the Bible is not simply a subject of theological debate. On the contrary, it is a matter of life and death. If the history of doctrine teaches any lesson, it demonstrates that the very survival of the Church is dependent upon its Christology. From Arianism and Nestorianism down to contemporary Unitarianism, the major heresies relating to the Person and Work of Christ have proved spiritually sterile and deadening in comparison with the continuing life of the Church when it has remained loyal to the risen Saviour.

So today any trend in theology, no matter how high the prestige of its proponents, that diminishes the Christology of the New Testament is a threat to the Church’s on-going life. It may be a process of demythologizing the historical Jesus as with a Bultmann, or it may be a denial of the empty tomb on the ground of non-historical, existential truth as with a Tillich. The fact remains that any theology that tampers with the historicity of the Lord Jesus whom believers in all communions and in all ages have loved and served smothers the life-breath of Christ’s body. To this danger we in America need to be as alert and courageous as was Karl Heim in Germany who, on being accorded public honors at Tuebingen on his eightieth birthday, spoke out before the whole nation in warning against Bultmannism.

This does not mean, however, that the Church is forever bound to any man-made statement for its final, infallible formulation of Christology. The ultimate truth regarding Christ lies in Scripture, not even in the loftiest human deductions from Scripture. As John Robinson of Leyden said, God has yet more light to break forth from his Word. But as illumination comes, it must be light, clarifying the divine Person and the eternally efficacious work of our Lord while at the same time holding fast his true humanity; it cannot be the darkness of cutting down the man Christ Jesus to merely natural dimensions.

There is, then, an indissoluble connection between Scripture and the sacred life of the Church, a connection as close as the relationship between the incarnate Word and the written Word. Thus the Church is obligated at peril of its life to maintain not only a high Christology but also a high view of the Bible. And if it be asked what that view is, the answer can only be that the Church that finds its life in Christ dare not espouse any attitude toward Scripture lower than that held by its Lord. What the Head believed and taught about the written Word is normative for the body (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10; Matt. 5:17, 18; John 10:35, 36; Luke 24:44). A Church that stands with the Lord in his estimate of Scripture as the irrefragable Word of the living God will find that Word a continuing source of spiritual nourishment (1 Peter 2:2).

But the Bible is not the only means of nourishing the body of Christ. There are the sacraments as well. Just as the Church that neglects the written Word cannot be strong, so the Church that neglects “the visible Word” of the sacraments cannot remain vigorous. Especially is this true of the Lord’s Supper. To say that the Church cannot remain vigorous apart from faithful and devoted remembrance of him who said, “This do in remembrance of me,” is not a plea for ritualism or sacerdotalism but a statement of plain fact. The risen Christ is with the two or three as well as with the multitudes who gather in his name; he speaks to his Church in prayer and in the reading and preaching of his Word. And he also speaks through the visible eloquence of the sacraments with a direct reality the Church greatly needs for its soul’s health. If this point is stressed, it is stressed simply because of the comparatively low estate of the Holy Communion in evangelical worship today.

But “communion” means “fellowship,” and the fellowship of believers in the Church is not confined to the Lord’s Supper. In actuality, fellowship is nothing less than an essential manifestation of the sacred life of Christ’s Church. Solitariness, atomization, insulation—these debilitate the body of Christ. Even as no child of God who lives and worships in an attitude of unconcern for his fellow-believers can keep spiritually well, so no branch of the Church that erects and dwells within walls of separation from others who confess and serve the risen Christ and who honor and obey God’s Word, can flourish and bear fruit.

In order to have life and to have it more abundantly, the Church must love its Lord. For it is love that deepens belief into life-giving, life-sustaining trust. Such love for the Lord must issue in obedience to him. “If ye love me,” said the Saviour, “keep my commandments … This is my commandment, That ye love one another as I have loved you” (John 14:15; 15:12). Once the principle of obedience to Christ through love is recognized, then the Church is obligated to the whole range of godly social concern through witness in all areas of life and through service in stewardship of time, talent, and resources.

“But,” someone asks, “what of the Father and the Holy Spirit? What relationship do they have to the sacred life of the Church?” The answer is that both the Father and the Spirit sustain a direct and organic relationship to the body of Christ. If in behalf of the Church we have spoken in primary emphasis of Christ as “our life,” we have done so in harmony with the New Testament, which calls the Church the body and bride, not of the Father and of the Spirit, but of Christ. The great spiritual equation that Jesus is God has unfathomable Trinitarian depths. The fact that the Church is Christ’s body makes it no less the Church of the living God. Throughout its history the Church has consistently confessed that the Jesus of Nazareth who was born of the virgin, who lived with and taught the disciples, who died upon the cross, is the risen Lord, “this same Jesus,” who ascended into heaven and who is coming again to take the power and reign. And it is “this same Jesus” who said of himself: “I and my Father are one … No man cometh unto the Father but by me … He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 10:30; 14:6, 9).

As for the relation of the Holy Spirit to the life of the Church, this too is implicit in a scriptural Christology. Indeed, the sounder and loftier the view of Christ, the more of the Spirit in the Church. For the function of the Holy Spirit is not to “speak of himself” but to “glorify” Christ (John 16:13). As it is the Spirit who regenerates the sinner (John 3:5), who makes sinful humanity into sons of God (Rom. 8:14), and who is life for the righteous (Rom. 8:10b), so it is the Spirit who, working corporately as well as individually through those whom he indwells, quickens the community of believers into the Church of the living God.

Finally, the Church must examine the state of its heart in relation to Christ who is its life. And if it finds, as it ought to find, that it loves the Lord, this avowal of love must never imply any relaxation of the Church’s devotion to truth. To set truth in opposition to love is a great error that, if persisted in, blights spiritual life. Deep piety is not incompatible with intellectual integrity. From Paul down through the Fathers and the Reformers to our own day there has been a noble succession of great minds who loved the Lord and who sought the truth. There is moving significance in the symbol that John Calvin chose for his personal seal—a flaming heart on the palm of an extended open hand. For the Church and for all who serve within its fellowship, it is never truth for truth’s sake, in the sense of truth as an abstraction, that is the goal. It is rather truth for the sake of him who is the truth and he is also the way and the life. All truth is of God and thus of Christ “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Everything that contributes to the greater understanding of Christ—through the Scriptures, through the sacraments, through fellowship, and through obedient service—confirms and strengthens the sacred life of the Church; while everything that diverts and distorts the Church’s view of the Lord enfeebles and stultifies its life. For the life of the Church, just as for the life of the individual believer

Christ is the end, as Christ was the beginning;

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.

Shorten Ecumenicalism To Ecumenism

Concern has been expressed by editors of religious journals at the lengthy form of ecumenicalism and ecumenicalist. Increasing use of these words has given justification to writers in the field of religion to shorten the long and awkward forms. The opinion generally held by language scholars is that active participants in any specialized field of study and research have the right to determine their own technical vocabulary. For example, botanists now commonly use “monocot” for “monocotyledon,” geneticists use “allele” for “allelomorph,” and economists are increasingly using “camerist” instead of “cameralist.”

Several shortened forms of ecumenicalist are already in use—ecumenicist and ecumenist. The first is more in agreement with the classical Greek root and preferred by the language purist; the second finds more frequent use and is becoming increasingly popular. Objection has been voiced against the use of the shortened forms because they have been used by critics of ecumenicalists as terms of disparagement. However, the context rather than the form will determine the meaning. As the shortened form becomes more popular it will be used by both friend and foe.

If the term ecumenist finds general acceptance, no reason exists why ecumenicalism cannot be shortened to ecumenism. Language purists would prefer ecumenicism to conform to the classical Greek root. The shortest form, ecumenism, would find ready acceptance especially among laymen who find the pronunciation of ecumenicalism rather difficult.

Since the terms are used with greater frequency, CHRISTIANITY TODAY suggests the usage of the shortened forms, ecumenism and ecumenist. No semantic or logical reason prevents the employment of such abbreviations and many would welcome the change suggested.

END

Theology

The Christ of the Bible

L. Nelson Bell

Christ of the Bible and Christ of personal experience must be the same. There are those who immediately will challenge this statement and will seek to refute it.

Sometime ago we heard a man ask a radio audience, “Is your Christ God?” The first reaction was one of surprise and curiosity but the more we thought of it the more relevant the question appeared.

The Christ portrayed in Scriptures has ascribed to him certain attributes both as to his person and his work. Here we find historical record and divine revelation combined. Here we are told who he was and what he did. The Bible also reveals truths about him that could come only through a revelation from God.

The affirmation has been made that we may reject the scriptural record about Christ and at the same time accept Christ. But the question immediately arises, What Christ?

If we reject the Christ of the Bible then we accept someone who is the product of human rationalization, deduction and imagination. Nothing basically wrong results from using all of our God-given faculties in thinking of Christ. However, if we use these while rejecting revealed truth about him the person we conjure may not be the real Christ at all.

But someone will argue: We accept the Christ of our own personal experience as led by the Holy Spirit. Good enough, but if the Christ of experience differs from the Christ of the Scriptures the question is whether we have been led by the Holy Spirit or by the imagination of our own hearts.

Unregenerate man notoriously goes off at tangents. The non-Christian religions of the world and the cults surrounding us are products of man-directed rather than Spirit-directed thinking.

The importance of obtaining the true view of Christ cannot be overestimated. A false Christ of the imagination, one different from the real Christ, can do inestimable harm. The pilot, whether on the sea or in the air, makes certain that the compass he follows is one worthy of confidence. How much more important when eternal destinies are at stake!

But someone asks, Is not the Christ of all men essentially the same? The answer is an emphatic NO.

The Christ of the Bible is the eternal Son of God, entering into this world of a virgin, manifesting himself as and declaring himself to be the Son of God, and showing himself both sinless and sovereign over all creation.

The Christ of the Bible deliberately and by design gave himself as a ransom for sinners; died on the cross and shed his blood that those who believe in him might be delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin.

This same Christ arose from the dead with a physical body that was seen and touched. His body bore the evidences of the crucifixion. He talked to and ate with his disciples and showed himself alive on a number of occasions. He then ascended into heaven while they watched him go.

The Christ of the Bible will come again someday in great glory and power. His coming will bring to an end this age in which we live.

The Christ of the Bible was the Son of God. He was also the Son of man. He is portrayed to us in terms of supernatural pre-existence, supernatural advent into the world, supernatural characteristics and power while in this world, dying a death with a supernatural effect on those who believe. His resurrection was a supernatural event bringing with it supernatural power and hope for Christians; his ascension into heaven was supernatural as to manner and his promised coming will be with supernatural manifestations.

On the other hand—and how vital the difference—the Christ of human reason coupled with unbelief is a man divested of his divine attributes, a man from whom the supernatural is stripped, a man who attained the highest ever achieved by any in the human race and one to whom we look only as an example to follow and a pattern to live by.

But there are those who give him some degree of deity, vigorously affirming their faith in the divine Christ but rejecting what they assume to be the man-made records in the Scripture by claiming they are the writings of ignorant and enthusiastic disciples. What Christ do they then worship? Is he not also a Christ who is the product of a discipleship even more ignorant? For the Christ they affirm is also a Christ of man’s own imagination and not the Christ of the Bible.

Why this vigorous attempt to present another Christ? It is basically a rejection of the authority and integrity of the Scriptures, a denial of the supernatural. We are told that advanced scholarship can no longer agree to the biblical record, but this is untrue for there are others of equal scholarship and deep piety who bow their hearts and minds and wills to the Christ of the Bible and accept him in all of his supernatural manifestations, attributing to him the glory and honor and power accorded him in the record.

Some attributes of the Christ of the Bible:

He is the Creator of the universe, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 3:3).

He was pre-existent, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5).

He was the Son of God, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

He was virgin born, “Fear not, Mary, … and behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, … the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:31–35).

He performed many miracles to prove his deity, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves know” (Acts 2:22).

He died on the Cross as an atonement for our sins, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

He arose from the dead, “Jesus said: Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).

He ascended up to heaven and is coming again, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11).

Finally, the Christ of the Bible is the only Saviour, our sure hope of eternal life, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

God in his infinite love and mercy has provided for us through his Son cleansing and forgiveness for sin and power to live for him through his indwelling Holy Spirit.

The Christ of the Bible is our one hope. It would be folly to trust in some other Christ.

Bible Text of the Month: Genesis 1:1

Christianity Today August 19, 1957

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

In the first page of this sacred book a child may learn more in an hour than all the philosophers in the world learned without it in a thousand years.—ANDREW FULLER.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.—HEBREWS 11:3.

The fact of the creation is regarded in the Bible as a fact revealed; and as such it is commended to our faith. Thus the scriptural method on this subject is exactly the reverse of what is called the natural. It is not to ascend from nature up to nature’s God, but to descend, if we may so speak, from God to God’s nature, or his works of nature; not to hear the creation speaking of the Creator, but to hear the Creator speaking of the creation.—R. S. CANDLISH.

As the Old Testament begins with a historical narrative, so also the New, and indeed the two volumes with a Biblos geneseos (Matt. 1:1); and further, the account of the creation of “the heavens and the earth” in the first page of Genesis has its counterpart in the notice of “the new heavens and the new earth” with which the Apocalypse and the canon of Scripture concludes—the first creation having for its object the first Adam, the new creation taking its rise from the second Adam. This is the great principle which gives coherence not only to Genesis but to the whole biblical history.—DONALD MACDONALD.

God The Creator

He that did the creative work is said to be God, Elohim. This Hebrew name is to be derived from a root found in the Arabic meaning “to fear” or “to reverence.” It, therefore, conceives of God as the one who by His nature and His works rouses man’s fear and reverence. It is used 2,570 times.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

The foundation of this vast fabric is laid in an adequate cause—Elohim, the Almighty. Nothing else would bear it. Man, if he attempt to find an adequate cause for what is, to the overlooking of God, shall but weary himself with very vanity.—ANDREW FULLER.

So great a revelation had never been made to man, for it disclosed the existence of the One eternal, holy, just and good God—a God of wisdom and order, as well as purity and truth, and implied his right to our absolute obedience and love, as the work of his hands. There remained only another self-disclosure, of still greater condescension, when he declared himself to mankind in the person of his incarnate Son.—GEIKIE.

At the very first verse and word of Genesis, it clearly steps over that impure sink of dualism beyond which the entire heathen and philosophical view of the world could never go. It does this by contrasting God in his eternal self-perfection to the creation which arose with time. The doctrine of the creation is the first act of revelation and of faith in the history of the kingdom of God.—J. P. LANGE.

There is something peculiarly striking in the manner in which the Holy Ghost opens this sublime book. He introduces us at once to God, in the essential fullness of his Being, and the solitariness of his acting. All prefatory matter is omitted. It is to God we are brought. We hear him, as it were, breaking earth’s silence, and shining in upon earth’s darkness, for the purpose of developing a sphere in which he might display his eternal power and Godhead.—C. H. MACKINTOSH.

Act Of Creation

The verb describing God’s initial work is “created” (bara). This verb is correctly defined as expressing the origination of something great, new and “epoch-making,” as only God can do it, whether it be in the realm of the physical or of the spiritual.… Consequently, this passage teaches creatio ex nihilo, “creation out of nothing,” a doctrine otherwise also clearly taught by the Scriptures (Rom. 4:17; Heb. 11:3, cf. also Ps. 33:6, 9; Amos 4:13). The verb is never used of other than divine activity.—H. C. LEUPOLD.

Created—It occurs in this chapter only on three occasions, the first creation of matter in the first verse, the first introduction of life in the fifth day, and the creation of man in the sixth day. Bara is thus reserved for marking the first introduction of each of the three great spheres of existence—the world of matter, the world of life, and the world spiritual, represented by man in this visible economy—all three of which, though profoundly distinct in essence, are intimately associated, and together constitute all the universe known to us.—GUYOT.

To imagine so small a thing as a bee, or fly, a grain of corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would stupify any creature in the consideration of it; much more to behold the heavens with all the troop of stars, the earth with all its embroidery, and the sea with all her inhabitants of fish, and man, the noblest creature of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness.—STEPHEN CHARNOCK.

The account given by Moses relates not to the whole creation, but merely to what it immediately concerns us to know. God made the angels; but nothing is said of them. The moon is called one of the greater lights, not as to what it is in itself, but what it is to us. The Scriptures are written, not to gratify curiosity, but to nourish faith. They do not stop to tell you how, nor to answer a number of questions which might be asked; but to tell you so much as is necessary, and no more.—ANDREW FULLER.

In the visible world it is easy to observe, (1) great variety; several sorts of beings vastly differing in their nature and constitution from each other. “Lord, how manifold are thy works,” and all good! (2) Great beauty; the azure sky and verdant earth are charming to the eye of the curious spectator, much more the ornaments of both. How transcendent then must the beauty of the Creator be! (3) Great exactness and accuracy; to those that with the help of microscopes narrowly look into the works of nature, they appear far more fine than any works of art. (4) Great power; it is not a lump of dead and inactive matter, but there is virtue more or less in every creature; the earth itself has a magnetic power. (5) Great order; a mutual dependence of being, and exact harmony of motions, and an admirable chain and connection of causes.

—MATTHEW HENRY.

Comfort And Praise

All must have remarked, in reading the devotional parts of the Bible, such as the book of Psalms, how constantly the psalmist comforts and strengthens himself, and animates himself in the face of his enemies by this consideration, that his help comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth.—R. S. CANDLISH.

Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.—REVELATION 4:11.

The Man Who Loved His Critics

A. Dallimore

There are many features of one of the greatest lives of Christian history—that of George Whitefield (1714–1770)—which posterity has largely overlooked. That he was a matchless orator and soul-winner is known to all, but such matters as his leadership of the vast international revival movement, his twelve years in evangelism in America, the degree of his learning, the lasting effect of his work on all the great denominations, and most especially, the consideration that the American Revolution and Constitution were mainly moulded in the fires of “The Great Awakening”—these significant achievements have received but scant attention. But important as are these aspects of a colossal career, still more valuable to us will be to make acquaintance with him as a man of God and see him afresh as, in an age of cruelty and religious bitterness, he maintained unflinchingly his own strong convictions, yet lived among men always in gracious kindness. He was ever the peacemaker among the controversialists and the Mr. Great Heart with tender care for all; a reacquaintance with this Whitefield, the Apostle of Love, will serve us well.

Humble Amid Popularity

If ever a man triumphed over temptations that attend popularity, it was Whitefield. When a youth of only twenty-two he preached every day, and often twice a day, in the largest churches of London to crowds no church could hold. When a year later he launched out into the open air he could draw thousands any hour of the day, any day in the week, anywhere in England! In the London parks he needed but to take his stand on a table or a stone wall, and people flocked around—ten thousand, twenty thousand, and sometimes even forty, sixty or eighty thousand. There were times when he lost all attempt at estimating their number and simply noticed how many acres they covered. Possessed with what was probably the greatest voice any human ever had, he moved these vast audiences at will and, impossible as it seems, made them all hear, except when the sound of their weeping drowned out his voice. The poor and ignorant were there and they understood him as he talked in simple, tender tones about the sinner’s Saviour. The mob was there and he beat down their cries and made them listen. The rich and learned were there and many a titled personage laid a coronet at the Master’s feet.

Whitefield was idolized above all measure. People pressed upon him as he walked the streets, or ran simply to touch his garment. They thronged his lodgings as he ate and came seeking him through the hours of the night. People everywhere talked of him, newspapers were full of him and on two continents they called him, “Ye Wonder of Ye Age.”

The Siren Call Of Fame

Deep, dark danger lurks in popularity and many a lesser man has been ruined by but a fraction of the adulation Whitefield received. He too heard the subtle siren call of fame as it offered him everything but the one thing he wanted most—the approval of his God. With characteristic greatness of soul he turned a deaf ear to all proffered gain and good will of earth. His own words tell it well:

Had it not been for my compassionate High Priest, popularity might have destroyed me. I used to plead with him to take me by the hand and lead me through this fiery furnace. He heard my request and gave me to see the vanity of all commendations but his own!

“The vanity of all commendations but his own!” In these youthful words of triumph over all concern for earthly acclaim, we see the real George Whitefield. Here is a man at twenty-three, dead to the opinions of humankind—their praise or blame, their applause or censure—and alive, gloriously alive to a higher approbation. He sought then, already early in his career, as he continued unswervingly throughout life’s hurried day, to show himself approved only unto God.

Meek Beneath Opposition

Yet along with admiration of his multitude of friends he was faced with hatred of an equal multitude of foes. As soon as Whitefield burst forth in his mighty evangelism evil men and the principalities and powers of darkness seemed suddenly to turn all their forces upon him. Hating the revival, its message, its methods and its results, they looked for a focal point on which to concentrate their rage. They found it, not so much in the astute and professorial Wesley, but in the colorful, irrepressible, magnetic Whitefield. In ways that we can hardly credit today every lying scheme that malice could devise to blacken his character and weaken his testimony was employed against him. Isaac Taylor sums it up saying,

Among those who by their flagitious crimes have most deeply sinned against society, it would be difficult to find a wretch upon whose guilty pate has been showered so much rancorous abuse as, year by year, was heaped upon the head of the love-fraught, self-denying and gentle-natured Whitefield.

It was very early in his ministry that he first saw himself villified in print. He was doubtless wounded by the cruel attack, but essayed no retaliation and made no reply. Instead he simply stood with bowed head and uttered the words, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” This became his fixed practice and times without number, as the storm of malice beat unrelentingly upon him throughout his life, he uttered the same phrase, often aloud, “Thou wilt answer for me, Lord!” How beautifully his friend Cowper wrote of him:

He loved the world that hated him; the tear

That fell upon his Bible was sincere;

Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife,

His only answer was—a blameless life.

And he who forged, and he who threw the dart,

Had each a brother’s interest in his heart.

(Leuconomos)

In the course of his wide travels Whitefield became associated with hundreds of other ministers. In all his dealings with these brethren there was no thought or hint of his own importance, but rather of that of the other man. Utterly careless as to what denomination anyone belonged, or whether he was a big city preacher or little country pastor, as long as he was born-again, Whitefield saw in him a challenge. With gracious words of encouragement, and sometimes a deserved rebuke, he sought to inspire and move him to become as earnest for souls as he was himself. Scores of preachers all over Britain and America lighted their torch at the Whitefield flame and herein lay the basic secret of the continuation and spread of the revival. In turn, it goes without saying that the evangelist who, so powerful and so famous, walked thus in simplicity and humility among his brethren was the object of their boundless affection and undying love.

Ill Treated By Good Men

But alas! it was not invariably so, and some of the crudest blows he bore were from ministers—good, earnest Bible-believing ministers. Many examples might be cited but one especially will illustrate the point:

He was only twenty-six when he went to Scotland, burdened with cares, terribly in debt for his orphanage and broken in health. In face of the great campaign in Edinburgh he needed and merited united assistance of all God’s people there. Instead he was confronted with a church rent by bitter quarrels. A group known as the Seceeders had long protested against the growing laxity in doctrine and practice within the Kirk. They had finally withdrawn and formed the Associate Presbytery, a rival organization from which they maintained a continuous warfare with their former brethren. Within the church were two other groups: the Moderates (much akin to the Modernists of today), and the Evangelicals who could not go along with the Seceeders because of their bitterness of spirit and so remained in the church to live and pray and work for revival.

Target Of Misguided Wrath

Both Seceeders and Evangelicals saw in the flaming young evangelist the answer to their problems and both entreated him to come to Scotland. His intention was to work among both groups, but the Seceeders, while they welcomed him as an angel of light as long as they thought he would remain with them, demanded that he have no fellowship with any of the men in the Kirk, “their enemies.” He sat down with the nine venerable gentlemen of the Associate Presbytery at their headquarters, as they attempted to shackle him with their particular brand of “contending for the faith” in blind, selfish partisanship and as they laid down the law that he must preach for them and them only. But he shocked the dour Scotsmen as he sternly replied that he would not now or at any time be limited by anyone as to where and with whom he preached. He told them plainly, “If a Jew, or a Mohammedan, or the Pope himself would lend me his pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Jesus Christ therein!”

Thereafter he preached among the Evangelicals, and with what vast results! Teeming congregations heard him twice a day in Edinburgh’s largest park. Prayer meetings sprung up spontaneously throughout the city and in many places throughout Scotland. Untold numbers were brought to a saving knowledge of Christ; the tides of unbelief that had sorely threatened the Kirk rolled back. It was the commencement of a whole new age of evangelicalism that ushered Scotland into the greatest century of spiritual power she has ever known, with boundless results that only the eternal morning will make known—all this stemmed from the Whitefield campaign in Scotland!

But what of the Seceeders, while this manifest blessing of God was upon his labors among the people of the Kirk? Stung with bitter realization that God had owned his ministry among their foes, they turned in wrath upon the man they had so lately extolled. They vented their rage in a 75-page booklet with the enormous title,

A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield, Wherein is shown that he is no Minister of Jesus Christ; that his call and coining to Scotland are Scandalous; that his practice is disorderly; that his whole doctrine is and his success must be diabolical, so that people ought to avoid him from duty to God, to the church, to themselves, to Posterity and to him!

When few paid heed to their bitter fulminations, they found it necessary to call a nationwide public fast in which “they solemnly engaged to strengthen one another’s hands to entirpate Popery, Arminianism, Tritheism, Sabeianism, and George Whitefieldism,” and when this ponderous attempt extirpated nothing, they again resorted to the press and produced another fiery booklet:

The Declaration, Protestantion and Testimony of the Suffering Remnant of the anti-Popish, anti-Lutheran, anti-Prelatic, anti-Whitefieldian, anti-Erastian, anti-Sectarian true Church of Scotland.

A lesser man than Whitefield would have ignored these wrathful men in haughty silence and let the evident blessing of God on his labors serve as sufficient rebuke. But let it be remembered that the Seceeders were not a band of ignorant fanatics; they were men of ability and learning, and some of their number were among the ablest pulpiteers of the land. Above all, they were earnest for their God in their mistaken way. Whitefield felt a kinship with them in their defense of the faith and longed to see them joined in cooperation with the Evangelicals within the church. Thus he arranged two or three interviews with them, in which he bluntly told them they were but building a Babel which soon would fall about their ears. He begged them to cease their strife with all such of their brethren who were true to God’s Book and to work together in the positive prosecution of the great work. But all his entreaties went unheeded and, choosing to continue in their bitterness, they soon turned from fighting Whitefield and the Kirk to fighting one another.

A Peacemaker Among Controversialists

Posterity has remembered much of the controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians of early Methodism, but it has failed to notice Whitefield’s passionate and unselfish attempts as peacemaker in the long dispute. John Wesley began the controversy with his sermon on free grace. It was a scathing denunciation of what he supposed was Calvinism and he called into use every talent of his brilliant mind—sarcasm, ridicule, exaggeration and plain abuse are there in high style. It was an explosive utterance that could not fail to inflame men’s passions and divide God’s work. To make matters worse, Wesley intended to carry the controversy far and wide by putting the sermon in print.

Ever since his conversion Whitefield had held strongly to Calvinistic views and found these confirmed in his wide reading of the Reformers and Puritans. He could not and would not compromise his deep convictions one iota. Yet he dreaded the results of Wesley’s sermon if it should be published, and wrote him:

Dear Honoured Sir: If you have any regard for the peace of the church, keep in your sermon on predestination. Oh! my heart in the midst of my body is melted like wax! The Lord direct us all! Honoured Sir, indeed I desire you all the success you could wish for! May you increase, though I decrease! Oh! wresde, wrestle in prayer that not the least alienation of affection may be between you and me.

This gracious attempt kept the wild dogs of controversy in check for but a short while, and as soon as Whitefield left for America, John Wesley published the sermon. He sought moreover to dispute the matter with Whitefield and wrote him a number of letters, to which Whitefield replied over and over again by entreating his friend to be at peace. The following is an excerpt from one of his replies, a beautiful example of his loving and humble spirit that may well serve as a model in many present-day discords:

My honoured friend and brother; for once hearken to a child who is willing to wash your feet. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, if you would have my love confirmed toward you, write no more to me about the misrepresentations wherein we differ.

The doctrine of election and final perseverance of those who are truly in Christ, I am ten thousand times more convinced of, if possible, than when I saw you last. You think otherwise—then why should we dispute? Will it not in the end destroy brotherly love, and take from us that cordial union and sweetness of soul which I pray God may always subsist between us? How glad would the enemies of the Lord be to see us divided! How many would rejoice should I join and make a party against you! And in one word, how would the cause of our common Master suffer every way by our railing disputes!… provoke me to it as much as you wish, I hope never to enter the lists of controversy with you.

Even these earnest endeavors at maintaining peace were fruitless. Controversy soon separated Arminian from Calvinist throughout England as cruel charges and countercharges were hurled by many men, all to the hindrance and disgrace of the revival. Whitefield exerted all his influence to keep the strife in check and largely succeeded throughout the remaining thirty years of his life. But immediately following his death it burst forth in renewed and shameful fury as men on both sides forgot his gracious example and brought the revival to a close by their godless strife.

And so lived the apostle of love, in sickness and poverty almost all his days, but in burning zeal for his God and quenchless love for men. He wept for souls as he prayed in private and wept for them again as he preached in public. It mattered not to him that Wesley should receive the earthly glory with regard to the great revival while he was discredited and forgotten. Nor would he have cared that his tomb on American soil should be overlooked and neglected by a people who ought to have cherished his memory. (Whitefield is buried beneath the pulpit of the Presbyterian church of Newburyport, Mass.) He lived above all such temporal concerns and only for his Master’s glory and his own accounting on the judgment morning. Well did Sir James Stephens, the renowned Cambridge professor, say:

If ever philanthropy burned in the human heart with pure and intense flame, it was in the heart of George Whitefield.… He had no preferences but in favor of the ignorant, the miserable and the poor. In their cause he shrank from no privation and declined neither insult nor hostility. To such wrongs he opposed the weapons of an all-enduring meekness and a love that would not be repulsed. The springs of his benevolence were inexhaustible and could not choose but flow.

END

The Rev. A. Dallimore, B.Th., is pastor of the Cottam Baptist Church, Cottam, Ontario, Canada. He was for some years editor of The Union Baptist and writes a monthly column for its successor, The Fellowship Baptist. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Seminary of Toronto, and for some years has been doing research on the life of Whitefield in preparation for a new biography to be called, George Whitefield and the Eighteenth Century Revival.

Apple PodcastsDown ArrowDown ArrowDown Arrowarrow_left_altLeft ArrowLeft ArrowRight ArrowRight ArrowRight Arrowarrow_up_altUp ArrowUp ArrowAvailable at Amazoncaret-downCloseCloseEmailEmailExpandExpandExternalExternalFacebookfacebook-squareGiftGiftGooglegoogleGoogle KeephamburgerInstagraminstagram-squareLinkLinklinkedin-squareListenListenListenChristianity TodayCT Creative Studio Logologo_orgMegaphoneMenuMenupausePinterestPlayPlayPocketPodcastRSSRSSSaveSaveSaveSearchSearchsearchSpotifyStitcherTelegramTable of ContentsTable of Contentstwitter-squareWhatsAppXYouTubeYouTube