The nineteenth century firmly believed that history will climax in a utopia. The world was automatically moving toward ever greater perfection. Although this optimism was shattered by the events of the twentieth century, Communists still echo it in their confident prediction that history will consummate in a worker’s paradise. Some noncommunists fear a nuclear holocaust will reduce the world to atomic ash.

All these views agree that some power other than man thrusts history toward its destiny. Each recognizes that history moves toward a goal that man has neither set nor chosen.

Each view also recognizes that man is a historical being caught up in, rather than in control of, the historical processes in which he lives. Were man the lord of history, he would be able to determine the goal of history, and that of his own life. He could then, for example, avoid death—except by choice. Were he lord of history, he could prevent his achievements from threatening his existence, as his scientific achievements today actually do. But man is not lord; he rides the moving arrow of history, but is unable to determine its direction and goal.

Further evidence that man is not lord of history is his inability to return on the past. He cannot backtrack on history and effect a new point of departure into the future. Even when he does not want to be at the place in time where he is, he cannot undo the past to make a new beginning. He can only go forward. This undemocratic, prescribed, no-choice-given rendezvous with a future conditioned by a past he cannot change, is a grim reminder that the disposition of history is in no sense his prerogative.

Marxism quite agrees and contends that an ironclad, economic determinism inexorably governs and propels history toward a preordained proletariat heaven. Herein lies the basis for Khrushchev’s confidence that Marxism will bury us.

Christians also believe that the movement and goal of history are not in man’s power. But they have heard from God that what is preordained is not economic materialism’s inevitable attainment of the worker’s paradise, but the reign of Jesus Christ as Lord of history and judge of the world. They know that he is God’s Elect, the one into whose hand God has chosen to delegate all power for the governance of all history and the gathering of all its strands for his purpose.

Because God has chosen him to be Lord, Jesus Christ can alter any situation; in bringing history to a chosen goal he can arrest its movement or reverse historical fact. His power to forgive and remove sin out of this world, to bring death to an end, to heal the sick, feed the hungry, still the storm, cast out demons, all demonstrate his power to dispose of all things, to cause former things to pass away, to make all things new. As Lord he can deliver the present from the snare of the past and thereby give the present an authentic future.

This lordship of Jesus Christ the Western world acknowledged in its decision to compute years and divide history in terms of B.C. and A.D.

Christ’s universal lordship is today being demonstrated. In our era of profound change and revolution, “one world” with a universal history is emerging. Whence comes the dynamic for these unprecedented cultural, social, economic, political upheavals that pressure and compress all nations into one world and one universal history?

The West is not being drawn into the history of the East. Rather it is the East which is being sucked into the history of the West. Western wars have become world wars. Western economic prosperity or depression affects the economics of the East as well. Western science, especially its technology, developed in a Christian milieu, is drawing the whole world into its economic and industrial orbit. Although the East wants no part of our wars, nor the undesirable concomitants of industrialization, it cannot escape involvement, nor evade the inheritance.

In Africa, Western ideas, chiefly Christian-oriented ideas of human dignity, freedom, and self-government, have caused uprising and turmoil.

This merging of the East into Western destiny is a remarkable phenomenon of our time. Tribes and nations that for centuries slumbered outside, have suddenly been drawn into one universal history.

Christians who know the Lordship of Christ and the power of his Gospel are not surprised at the revolutionary character of our times. They knew such times would come. They knew that Christ crucified would draw even earth’s remotest peoples to that one place of judgment and grace, the center of history, the Cross of Calvary. Christians are not surprised, for they know that Jesus Christ as Lord gathers all history into his own hand and purpose.

★ This issue closes out the sixth volume year of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The annual index (pages 55–63) is the most exhaustive yet attempted. For the first time references to the news section are included. Bound copies of Volume VI will be available soon ($6.50 postpaid).

★ This is the Fall Book Issue, complete with forecast and several features on communicating the Gospel effectively through the printed page.

★ Editorial Associate James Daane contributes the threshold essay, the book forecast, and the article on “Eschatology and History” to this issue.

The 100-year-old controversy concerning the age of man has been stimulated in recent years by the very early dates (such as 1,750,000 years ago) assigned to the remains of Zinjanthropus, presumably a form of early man. Zinjanthropus was uncovered by Louis B. Leakey in Olduvai Gorge, Tanganyika, in 1959.

Even after 1859, the date of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, discussion of an early age of man, stimulated by the discoveries of the Neanderthal finds in the late 1840s and the 1850s, was confined almost totally to limited academic circles. Darwin’s work made general evolution a public concern, but because he was silent about human origins the problem of man’s age as well as of his evolution was still not widely raised. It was not until the publication of The Antiquity of Man by Sir Charles Lyell in 1863 that this subject emerged into the limelight of popular discussion.

Although Lyell was reluctant to commit himself to definite dates, it was abundantly clear from his discussion that he envisioned a very considerable extension of the traditional biblical chronology, based largely on the work of Archbishop Ussher and found in the margins of many Bibles. Many Christians of conservative persuasion felt that Lyell’s views were an attack on the inerrancy and the historicity of Scripture. Other churchmen of more liberal persuasion did not view the disintegration of biblical chronology as a theological catastrophe. Thus a line, though not a sharp one, was drawn between conservative and liberal elements concerning an early date of man.

In the decades that followed the Antiquity of Man, archaeological and anthropological discoveries continued to give strong evidence for an earlier age of man than the traditional biblical chronology. A number of leading conservatives, men who without the slightest reservation stood for the inerrancy and the historicity of Scripture, accordingly reexamined biblical chronology. Such was the work of William Henry Green and B. B. Warfield, both of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Accommodating Scripture

Today Christians working in the fields of science have been often criticized for their constant willingness to accommodate Scripture to scientific discovery. In many respects perhaps this is a justified criticism. It must be recognized that accommodation to scientific discovery is not a valid reason for giving up traditionally-held beliefs and for reinterpreting Scripture, but it is not less true that scientific discovery can and should serve the valuable function of stimulating our thinking, demanding an investigation of our current interpretation and understanding. Is it in accord with a valid biblical exegesis? This was the desire of Green and Warfield, not merely to accommodate Scripture to scientific discovery, but to interpret biblical genealogies and chronology from the best principles of biblical interpretation. The first step in evaluating the age of man is thus to examine the biblical evidence.

Hebrew literature is characterized by a high degree of structuralization. This is particularly true of the sections which were memorized and where various mnemonic devices were used—the poetical sections (Psalms 107; 119, Lamentations, and so forth) and the genealogies (Genesis 5; 11; Ruth 4). A notable example of such structuralization is the genealogy of Matthew 1, which is arranged in three groups of 14 generations. That this genealogy is artificially structured is made obvious by the fact that four kings are omitted in the second group and that Jechonias is counted twice (at the end of the second group and at the beginning of the third) in order that each group might have 14 names. These three groupings are clearly an artificial structure used as a mnemonic device.

The second relevant characteristic is the frequent omissions in Hebrew genealogies. Again Matthew 1 serves to illustrate the point, in that the years from Abraham to Christ have been given in only three “generations.” These omissions can be seen in three ways: (1) By comparing genealogy with genealogy (1 Chron. 6:3–14 with Ezra 7:1–5, etc.). (2) By comparing the number of names in a given genealogy with the elapsed time between the first member of the genealogy and the last. For example, note the genealogy of Pharez in Ruth 4, where the ten names cannot cover the elapsed time. These years probably require from 14 to 18 generations. It should be noted that these ten names are included in the first section of the Matthew 1 genealogy, implying thereby that even in this section names are probably omitted. (The same phenomenon is noted in a comparison of 1 Chron. 24:24 with 1 Chron. 23:15, 16.) (3) By comparing elapsed time with chronologies established by archaeology. According to Ussher’s chronology, the time between the flood and the days of Abraham was only 292 years, but an unbroken archaeological sequence in Egypt extends back much more than 300 years before Abraham. Moreover, it would be impossible to consider the Egyptian culture of Abraham’s time as the result of a mere 300 years’ development.

A look at the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 will reveal that they have identical structures, consisting of ten generations, if one accepts the Septuagint rendering of Genesis 11:12. (This reading includes the name of Canaan, quoted in Luke 3:36, and has strong evidence of being in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts.) The number 10 is used as a structural device in other places in Mosaic writing—in the structure of the book of Genesis as a whole, the divisions being marked by ten toledoths (“and these are the generations of …”), and in the Decalogue. It is also used for the genealogy in Ruth 4, which can clearly be shown to have missing generations. Therefore, it may be reasoned that these genealogies do not imply the inclusion of all names and would not have been understood to do so by the Hebrews of that day. The thinking of Archbishop Ussher and later Christians is a product of our Western conceptions and of our basic literary frame of reference. The genealogies must be considered trustworthy for the purpose for which they were given, but this purpose was not that of supplying a comprehensive chronology.

Theology and Man’s Antiquity

The first full theological treatment of the interpreting of genealogies was by William Henry Green in the April, 1890, issue of Bibliotheca Sacra. This article set the tenor of conservative Christian thinking for quite some time. After an extensive consideration of biblical genealogies, Green drew the following conclusion: “… that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham.” In 1911, in an article published by the Princeton Theological Review, B. B. Warfield says that “the question of the antiquity of man has of itself no theological significance. It is to theology, as such, a matter of entire indifference how long man has existed on earth.” These are the conclusions of biblical scholars, whose convictions concerning the infallibility and accuracy of Scripture cannot be denied, and they are based entirely on sound exegesis. They are not the conclusions of scientists who were seeking to accommodate Scripture to scientific discovery. Therefore, with this as the background of the scriptural demands, it is possible to look at recent scientific discovery concerning the age of man.

What is man? Many of the reproductions of ancient man that are given in newspapers and popular periodicals are so far out of line with the picture Christians have of early man that their authenticity is immediately rejected. But Scripture teaches us nothing concerning the physical appearance of early men. Our basic definition of man, both from the standpoint of Scripture and of science, is functional rather than structural. That is, we define man in terms of what he can do rather than in terms of his appearance. A basic characteristic of man is his ability for conceptural thought. Theologically, this may be considered an aspect of the “image of God.” Anthropologically, this ability may be logically deduced by evidence of such cultural practices as toolmaking. Man’s ability to conceptualize also gives the psychological base for his use of language. It is largely for these reasons that the Australopithecines, represented to us by Zinjanthropus and more popularly known by the non-endearing terms of South African Ape-Men or Man-Apes, have recently been considered to be men.

Most recent interest in the dating of man was raised when the geological strata in which Zinjanthropus was found was dated by the potassium-argon method at 1,750,000 years.

The potassium-argon (K/A) dating is a radioactive method based upon the chemical decomposition of Potassium 40 to Argon 40. The assumptions underlying this method are the same as for all radioactive methods of dating, such as measuring the decomposition of uranium to lead and Carbon 14, and have been well verified by the general consistency of various radioactive methods and by other geological methods of dating, often aided by historical and archaeological means. The actual applications of the method have often encountered problems of contamination, applicability to certain types of material, and so forth, but these are practical problems which have not disproved the basic assumptions of the method. (There is a significant difference between the laboratory techniques used to measure decomposition in K/A age determination and other radioactive methods, and it is thought that these methods are much more exacting.) Without question, when it is sufficiently refined and capable of consistent and accurately reproducible results, this method promises to be a major advance toward the dating of human prehistory.

The results of K/A dating have been differentially received by various individuals—some being very receptive and others highly critical. Two of those most critical have been W. L. Straus and Charles B. Hunt of Johns Hopkins University. In Science (April 27, 1961) they concluded:

“Because some of the Olduvai Gorge dates are inconsistent, some must be inaccurate; they all may be. Until further tests determine which materials give dependable dates, we do not know which dates are accurate. Until this is learned, the indicated ages must be taken cum grano sails.”

Caution in accepting these precise dates at face value may be well warranted, but they do seem to suggest that the general magnitude of man’s age is very great. Nor does a date of man which is measured in terms of hundreds of thousands of years rest alone on the potassium-argon dating of the Olduvai Gorge. In Europe and Asia, as well as in Africa, fossil men can be given Middle Pleistocene dating by faunal association, stratigraphic position, and by correlation to glacial formations. Glacial chronology is so well established for Europe that fossil correlations must certainly place man’s age at several hundreds of thousands of years. So the problem of whether we accept an early date for the appearance of man does not rest only on the validity of the few uncertain K/A dates of Zinjanthropus which we have at present, but rather rests upon the entire construction of Pleistocene geology.

In conclusion, it may not be necessary as yet to think of the age of man in terms of millions of years, as some recent articles would have us believe. But it certainly is necessary to think of man’s origin in terms of tens of thousands of years and with very high probability in terms of hundreds of thousands. It is certainly not accurate to think in terms of the thousands of years which our traditional chronologies have taught us.

DONALD R. WILSON

Visiting Instructor

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Michigan

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,” rhapsodized Wordsworth on the French Revolution, “but to be young was very heaven.” A trace of the same exultant note can be found in WCC circles here in Paris. Never has the ecumenical star shone so brightly. The Central Committee has just recommended for membership seven new churches, and has been happily discussing the prospect of sending observers to the Vatican Council. At the local Church of Scotland on Sunday I heard a sermon on “Thou art Peter,” to which a Roman Catholic could have breathed Amen. Meanwhile Cardinal Bea said in England: “The fundamental issue is the teaching of the Church.… Here is the deepest challenge which divides us. If this problem is solved there will not be great difficulty in admitting a Papal infallibility.” Here again is that monumental presumption that in church unity discussions Rome is negotiating from a position of strength.

To criticize any of the current trends is unfashionable, but I’ll risk it, for I’ve just been reading Edmond Paris’ The Vatican against Europe, published in London by P. R. Macmillan. Born a Roman Catholic, Paris investigated the official version given of certain historical facts, and produced this volume which is a model of patient research, cross-checking, and scrupulous documentation. Ecclesiastical circles tried to smother it, happily without success.

Paris shows how since Charlemagne the Papacy has leant upon the Germans as a secular arm to impose its authority. He quotes from René Boylesve’s Feuilles tombées: “Are you then surprised at her [i.e. Rome’s] predilection for Germany, despite the latter’s crimes? The Church and Germany? But they are sisters. Both love themselves for themselves alone and are hypnotized by their own powers; both exercise dissimulation and hypocrisy.” The mass of evidence produced by Mr. Paris is positively frightening.

In Germany, it is shown how Hitler was voted full rights in 1933 when German Catholics heard that the Pope himself was “favourably disposed” towards Hitler; thus Catholic youth organizations combined with those of the Nazis. The Concordat made between the Vatican and Germany was carried out under the aegis of Msgr. Pacelli (the future Pius XII) who was in Munich during the rise of Nazism. This Concordat gave the State the right of veto over episcopal nominations, and required the bishops to swear allegiance to Hitler. After his election Pacelli was referred to as “the German Pope.” His entourage, his confessor (Msgr. Bea, now cardinal), were German, and he regarded Germany’s role as the “sword of God.”

Steadily, country by country, Paris exhibits his terrible proof. In Italy, secret negotiations between papal agents and Mussolini put the dictator in power; in 1929 the Lateran Treaty effected the union of Fascism and the Papacy, and ensured the clerical blessing when poison gas was later used against Christian Ethiopia. In Austria, the “Christian” chancellors succeeded one another, beginning with the Jesuit, Msgr. Seipel, and ending in 1938 with the country’s absorption by Hitler when eight million Austrians swelled the ranks of German Roman Catholics. In Belgium, Catholic Action nurtured a local Nazism which paved the way for Hitler. In Spain, the Vatican recognized Franco in 1937 and later decorated him with the Supreme Order of Christ. In France, the hierarchy in 1939 urged the faithful to “collaborate” with Hitler whose war Cardinal Baudrillart declared was “a noble undertaking.” A side-glance is directed at Father Coughlin and the Christian Front movement in the United States, and at Father Walsh and Senator McCarthy. One year after Pearl Harbor, La Croix, greeted by Pius XII as the organ of “pontificial thought,” said: “It is very understandable that these states [Germany, Italy, Japan] should have agreed to establish a front against a danger which, particularly in the West, is threatening civilization and our Christian ideals.” Eight months later it said: “Nothing good can come of the intervention of troops from across the Channel and from the other side of the Atlantic.” On another occasion the editor-in-chief declared that “the New Order will bear the imprint of the Christian character.…”

Most pathetic of all is the account given by Paris of the Roman Church’s share in war crimes in the present Yugoslavia, where 600,000 Serbian Orthodox and Jews were massacred with the approval of clerical members of the Croatian Parliament, including Msgr. Stepinac. In addition, 240,000 Orthodox Christians were forcibly “converted.” Though Stepinac was in 1946 sentenced to 16 years’ hard labor for war crimes, Paris comments: “The wondrous deeds of the Archbishop of Zagreb could not fail to bring their reward: the Cardinal’s hat.” Referring to the massacred, Paris says: “If Abel has a bad press in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, Cain on the contrary has always been the subject of an endless mansuetude there.”

Other clerical war criminals include Msgr. Tiso, prelate Gauleiter of Slovakia, who held that Catholicism and Nazism were “working hand in hand” to refashion the world. (Tiso was hanged in 1946 after conviction by the Prague Tribunal.) Oswald Pohl, Nazi official who ordered the concentration camps to be equipped with gas chambers, also received the apostolic blessing from Pius, and the comforting words: “Unjustly condemned by men, thou shalt find thy reward in Heaven. This I assure thee.” On the Nuremberg verdict on Franz von Papen, privy chamberlain to Pius XI, L’Ordre de Paris comments: “It is both painful and shameful to have to say it, but von Papen’s acquittal is Pius XII’s condemnation.” Von Papen had claimed that the Third Reich was the first power in the world to put into practice “the lofty principles of the Papacy.” So far was the Vatican from disowning such sentiments that in July, 1959, John XXIII nominated him again as privy chamberlain. Documentary evidence is adduced also of how the Vatican sheltered and financed other fleeing war criminals.

Mr. Paris’ book should be required reading (as well as Hans Küng’s much vaunted The Council and Reunion) for travelers on the Rome Express, so that what the Vatican is as well as what the Vatican says should thunder in their ears.

Remembering how Wordsworth’s touching faith in the French Revolution vanished when he realized its true nature, we are ultimately confronted by the question: What price are we prepared to pay for ecumenicity? “The claims of the Roman Catholic Church,” says Professor J. W. Draper of New York University, “imply a rebellion against modern civilization and an intention to destroy it, at the risk of destroying society itself. To be able to submit themselves to these claims, men need the souls of slaves!” It is mere wishful thinking to suppose that Vatican policy has changed just because a friendly priest invites us to tea.

Science and religion—Your world will be more of a world of scientism than ours has been. My generation did uncover some amazing scientific data. In fact, much of it became a most disturbing element in the realm of evangelical Christian thought. There developed, therefore, a bitter controversy between science and Christian belief which wrought great havoc in the church. As I look back upon those days, I must confess that those of us who were reared in the fundamentalist tradition did not do a very good job in sincerely and courageously facing up to the scientific data, much of which we must accept today as verified data. By and large, my generation fought and lost many battles with science which not only brought us humiliation, but which have proved detrimental to our Christian testimony. The reasons for this, in my opinion, were several: 1. We maintained an altogether too obscurantist attitude. 2. Oft-times we resorted to ridicule and unwise rebuttal. 3. We fought the battle on too narrow a strip. This was especially true with respect to creation. We grossly oversimplified this complex question so that it was reduced to an either/or matter of instantaneous creationism, or atheistic developmentism. But what is even more regrettable is that we gave the impression that science was an enemy of the Christian faith and that we must do everything in our power to oppose this enemy. What we should have done was to attempt to show that so far from there being ground for any distrust or hostility on the part of the Christian faith toward science, there was actually so close a connection between them that there ought to have been mutual trust, understanding and cooperation between scientists and Christian theologians. We should also have honestly faced and discussed more courageously the real problems and difficulties which arise for our Christian faith in the findings of scientists in their various fields of research. At bottom, the real questions which needed discussion were how any new scientific theories would affect the fundamental doctrines of Christianity about the nature and destiny of man, the fall, and redemption.

But while we are ready to confess that our theology may not embrace everything that we would like to know, we must insist that the scientists do not know everything. More and more I am convinced that one of the main reasons for the view that the relation between religion and science must be envisioned in terms of a conflict is provided by the assumption of the nineteenth century scientist of the virtual finality and immutabilitv of the scientific notions of his day. This was a faulty assumption. I recall having read that the noted philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, said that when he was a student at Cambridge he studied mathematics under the best teachers of his day. He acknowledged every basic presupposition that had been assumed in those days had been either altered or rejected by present-day mathematicians. Scientific views have been altered, and will be altered. Therefore we believe we have a right to confront scientists with the inadequacies of their assumptions and presuppositions as well as the limitations of their methodology. We must insist that they cannot explain the nature of nature itself without a hypothesis which includes God in it. Nor do they have, in fact, an adequate explanation of man as to his origin, his nature and his destiny. Recently some scholars such as Karl Heim, the German theologian, C. E. Raven, the British theologian, and E. L. Mascall, a Catholic theologian who delivered the Bampton Lectures for 1956 (Christian Theology and Natural Science), have made significant contributions in their attempt to relate science and Christian theology. Among evangelical scholars in America we have the work of Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and the Scripture, and also the work edited by Russell L. Mixter, Evolution and Christian Thought Today, which have grappled with this most difficult issue. We are not called upon to subscribe to every position or observation made by any one or all of these authors, but certainly we should be grateful for their having made a long delayed “breakthrough” in the “wall of silence” which has been so long surrounding us evangelicals. But what they have done is only a beginning, and so my generation leaves to you a great unfinished task as a part of your destiny. We sincerely hope you will carry on the dialogue between Christian theology and science and that you will be enabled to demonstrate more and more the harmony which must exist between God’s Word and God’s world to the edification of both the believer and the scientist.—Dr. HOWARD W. FERRIN, President, Barrington College, in remarks to the Senior Banquet in Houghton College.

LET THE BIBLE ALONE—The British scientist who is rewriting Genesis apparently has been demoralized by a peculiarly American admonition: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The whole idea of Adam and Eve, he says, won’t fit in with evolution, so he’s eliminated the Garden of Eden and his version reads, “In the beginning … God said let matter and energy form atoms and let atoms combine and condense to form solids and liquids and let stars and planets evolve in their millions; and it was so.”

This may be good scientific theory at the moment but it is poor religion and worse literature. We don’t think it will sell. We are not among those who want to fight about whether Adam ate the apple. It may have been a grape, or a pomegranate or a naval orange. But the rich allegory which has come down to us from the nomadic Hebrew poets tells the story of human travail and aspirations accurately enough.

The apparent conflicts between Genesis and scientific fact are minor and probably transient. For the story of Adam’s rib, this humorless scientist substitutes: “So man evolved, male and female, from the higher animals by the spirit of God.” How does he know? Particularly, how does he know the entrancing story of how male and female all began?

The Bible is our richest storehouse of cultural history and tradition. Particularly in the King James version it surpasses in poetry of expression anything else in the language. This scientist should go back to his test tubes and let the Bible alone. Taking with him, if possible, all the other modernizers whose revised and logical versions tend to reduce this inspirational volume to the flat and practical level of a mail order catalog.—Editorial, The Washington Daily News, August 8, 1962.

O Lord, thou hast searched me (Ps. 139: la; read 1–24 as a prayer now).

A psalm we find difficult, because we think of omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and transcendence. But really a prayer in simple words. Four parts, equal in length, all about you and your God. One part hard to understand.

I. God Knows You, just as you are (1–6). Think of a physician with a fluoroscope, though the Celestial Surgeon sees vastly more. He alone can read the soul that he has made. Whatever is in it of good, he knows. Also, anything evil. How then do you feel under his all-seeing eye?

II. God Goes with You, wherever you go (7–12). On an ocean liner or in an airplane, you are in the presence of the Most High. Hence no region of earth can be God-forsaken. Also at home, in midnight gloom or noontide splendor, the Lord is with you, tender to sympathize, mighty to save. One of the most wondrous facts about God! Learn to welcome his presence!

III. God Has Made You, just as you are (13–18), except for sin, which he permits but does not cause. Body and soul alike come from his hand, perhaps the most wondrous of his created works. You cannot change your stature, or personality. But by his grace you can make the most of yourself as a beloved child of God and, like your Lord, a devoted servant of men. Also, because God has made you a person like himself, you can worship him now in the beauty of holiness, and afterward in heaven live with him to enjoy his presence forevermore, all through Christ.

IV. God Enlists You on his side (19–24). This difficult part we often pass by as though it meant nothing now. But it shows that God is “the Source of the distinction between right and wrong.” Indeed, his only Son “died for the difference between right and wrong.” For that difference he bids you live and, if need be, die. In the world today there is a battle unto death, and God bids you be on his side. What less can it mean to be a Christian today?

How do you feel while under the searchlight of God? Ashamed and sorry for sin and weakness? Yes! But also full of gratitude and zeal because God himself in Christ opened the way to find pardon, cleansing, and peace, as well as joy and endless hope. Meanwhile, if you wish to live with him hereafter, where beyond these warring hosts there is eternal peace, he grants you the privilege of battling for “the crown rights of the Redeemer.” What less does it mean to be a Christian? Are you a Christian? If not, become one now.

… If a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether—the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new (2 Cor. 5:17, Phillips; read vv. 1–21).

To be useful for God and the Church a man needs to maintain the freshness of the new life he received when he was born again. As Paul grew older he found such freshness “in Christ.” Through this chapter he points to five sources of spiritual refreshing:

I. Awareness of the Divine Presence (v. 18). The God who has provided a means of reconciliation between the sinner and himself continues to share his grace with the one he has redeemed. With the passing experiences of life a man’s understanding of God is enlarged. He knows that God is directing his life. Through the Spirit he finds a revitalizing mystery that draws him ever forward. For one who daily walks with God, as Paul did, life can never grow stale.

II. A Sense of Man’s Spirituality (v. 16). Paul no longer bases his knowledge of a man on his outward life, but evaluates him according to his inner worth as a child of God with capacity to exist forever. In associating with different persons Paul weighs their potential when transformed by the Lord. So Paul accepts each person as a challenge to attain the highest potential. The Apostle’s alertness increases with spiritual invigoration.

III. A Balance of Spiritual Motives (v. 14). When the love of Christ controls a man, there is no limit to his endurance. To him the Spirit imparts greater stability and spiritual vitality for daily needs. In order through Christ to have vitality for each opportunity of life, he feels that he must go beyond himself.

IV. Active Partnership with God (vv. 18–20). By committing to his partner the ministry of reconciliation, God shows how completely he trusts the Apostle. This trust gives him a new sense of his worth, and a new zeal in the ministry of reconciliation. What an unfailing source of vitality for God’s work!

V. Assurance of Hope for the Future (v. 1). Being “in Christ” means a fellowship not to be broken by death. Then the believer enters the place the Lord has gone before to make ready, and receives the reward for his faithfulness. In every conflict of earth this assurance strengthens Paul, and makes him more than conqueror.

These five sources of freshness lie open for every believer here today. In fellowship with the Lord and in service through his Church, each of you can be increasingly alive and alert for Christ.—President, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Mo.

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. BLACKWOOD

CLARENCE E. MACARTNEY,The Greatest Christian Before Christ;W. A. CRISWELL, JR.,The Church Not Blessed;LEWIS T. CORLETT,Maintaining Spiritual Freshness; and Your Soul Under the Searchlight, by DR. BLACKWOOD.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would that thou wert cold or hot (Rev. 3:15; read vv. 14–22).

In the district around Laodicea are mineral springs. As long as the water is boiling you can somehow drink it, but if tepid it is of all things most nauseating. Our Lord uses these springs as a background for the only one of the seven churches for which he has no word of commendation or encouragement.

I. Indifferent to God. There is about some churches a “goodishness” that passes for Christianity. A sort of civic betterment program, with “pay your debts, love your mother, and don’t kill anybody,” a maudlin sentimentality supposed to be Christianity. It makes God sick. Indifferent to doctrine about God, to commitment, to devotion. We are enthusiastic about everything else, even a touchdown in the Cotton Bowl. But when it comes to Christ and the Church, there is no zeal. You don’t have religion without zeal. Christianity is a fire in the bones, a moving in the soul, a stirring of the heart, a vast illimitable commitment of life to God.

II. Deceived about Self. They said: “We are rich. We have need of nothing.” Christ said: “You are poor, naked, blind.” In proportion to their lukewarmness they were filled with self-satisfaction. “We don’t need God. We don’t need to pray, or repent.” That is humanism. I don’t know of a commoner attitude in the world today. “All we need is to set our scientists to work, get the energies of our great people hitched up to these great programs, and we can work out these things ourselves!” That is the Laodicean church.

III. Exclusive of Christ. Outside the Laodicean church is Christ, knocking. He has been gone a long time. The centuries have watched the progress and the regress of his Church. Now he comes back. Is the door open to receive him? This is the end of the age. What a tragedy when the Lord came the first time, and his own received him not! How infinitely more sad when our Lord shall come back to earth, and knock at the door, wishing to come in and eat the last supper! Will there be anybody watching in true devotion, waiting for the appearing of Christ Jesus? Not in Laodicea! He is on the outside!

Letters like this one are addressed to the congregation, but the final appeal is always to the individual soul. Even in Laodicea, “If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him.” Each person must hear for himself, repent for himself, and be saved. To the believing soul the promise of our Lord is this: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.” In that day we shall reign with him. We are going to have an intense life, and share with Christ in ruling the universe. We don’t know what all this includes and what God has in store for his people. But it will be wonderful beyond compare. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”—Pastor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas.

These things said Isaiah, … and spake of him (John 12:41; read 12:37–41).

More than any other man in the Old Testament, Isaiah saw the glory of Christ. When we call this man the greatest Christian before Christ, we refer to his knowledge of the coming Redeemer, and to his presentation of Christ’s work of atoning for sinners. Of all the Old Testament writers, this man is most often quoted in the New. Among all those inspired books we could least afford to lose this one, for here we have the Gospel before Christ came to seal it with his blood.

I. The Greatness of This Man’s Writings. Other men of the Old Testament we consider great because of their actions; this man because of his thought and his writings. Even now the best way to learn the language of heaven and thus fit ourselves for dwelling in the City of God is to know the music of Isaiah. In this book the great verses and promises would in themselves almost make a Bible. About the life of this prophet we know but little in detail, but we know much about the transforming experience at the beginning of his long career as a prophet.

II. The Greatness of This Man’s Vision. While at worship in the temple, young Isaiah beheld a transforming vision of God and his holiness. The first effect of this overwhelming vision was to impress Isaiah with his own sinfulness. Then came the vision of cleansing, as by fire. And after that, the call of opportunity and duty. From that day to this, wherever the Church drifts from the true Gospel, and from Christ as the Redeemer from sin, the reason is that the sense of sin has faded.

III. The Greatness of This Man’s Witness to Christ. The greatest thing about Isaiah was his witness to Christ and his glory on the Cross. That witness appears at its best in one glorious chapter, the fifty-third. There we can listen to the most moving and uplifting music of redemption. There we behold the dying Redeemer, the Sin Bearer. Just why or how all that could be, we cannot tell. But we know that he died for sinners like ourselves, and that he did not die in vain.

In the Church today we need this note of triumph. Everywhere we behold what looks like a revival of paganism. But when I read the pages of Isaiah, who saw Christ’s glory and spake of him, I see the kingdom of Satan overthrown. But I see something more than that. I see Christ as the sinner’s Saviour, my own Redeemer. All my hope is based on what Isaiah wrote of him, when he beheld Christ’s glory: “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as white as snow” (1:18b, c). (From Sermons on Old Testament Heroes, by permission of Abingdon Press.)

“Very quickly, as you listen to a preacher,” writes A. C. Craig of Glasgow University, “you begin to sense whether his words are the flowering of a life or just the frothing of a mind; whether he is a genuine traveller or only a clerk in the office of Thomas Cook & Son.”

Few fallacies are more attractive than that of supposing that “clergy” and “integrity” are synonymous. What sort of professional undertow had St. Paul been feeling when he wrote to his Corinthian friends, “… I hold this ministry by God’s mercy.… I do not go about it craftily …” (2 Cor. 4:1, 2, Moffatt).

Always, authentic pulpit proclamation is more than the preparation and delivery of a sermon: it is the preparation and delivery of a preacher. Some of us were but novices in the ministry when the fire in E. M. Bounds’ writings kindled a flame in our own souls. “The man,” cried Bounds, “the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life.”

What, now, do we mean by integrity in the preacher?

Obviously we do not mean either impeccability or infallibility. The capability to sin and err is as indestructible in the man of the cloth as it is in the man of commerce.

Nor do we mean immunity against all doubts. John the Baptist had his hour of doubt. Joseph Parker, who declares that until he was 68 he never had a doubt, lost his wife and, in the blinding agony of his bereavement, found himself overwhelmed by queries and qualms. “In that hour,” he later confessed, “I became almost an atheist.”

The integrity of the preacher is linked, first of all, with his openness to God. Paul Holmer, in “The Pulpit,” has recently pointed out that when you are reading Augustine, or Luther, or Calvin, you are in touch with minds immersed in the sense of God; that is to say, minds “pervaded by enthusiasm and passion,” which habitually make “God and His righteousness” the frame of reference within which everything else in the world—“one’s future, one’s past, others, objects, and events”—must be approached. It is a complete God-orientation. Here is the piercing, relentless honesty of the 139th Psalm.

The integrity of the preacher is related, in the second place, to the openness with which he regards himself. It is Burnham, I believe, who says that “the first law of mental hygiene is, Be honest with yourself.” Even the minister whose counseling room has given him countless opportunities to observe the incredible deviousness of rationalizing minds, falls easily into his own ill-recognized rationalizations. There may be times indeed when it is the better part both of wisdom and valor for him to keep some of his doubts from his congregation (since they are induced by such accidents of life as a bout with influenza or a disappointing evening with the official board!), but at no time is it healthful for him to be evasive about them in the privacy of his own mind.

The integrity of the preacher is associated, in the third place, with openness towards the congregation he serves, the communion to whom his ordination vows were given, and the holy, apostolic, catholic church whose witness he is.

Is there integrity here if he is slack in the preparation of his sermons?

Or, let his preparation be ever so thorough as a homiletical technician, is there integrity if he has held but scant audience with God and thus comes perfunctorily to his pulpit task? What if the well-turned manuscript, unsteeped in prayer, produces only a “felicitous emptiness?

Or, is there integrity if, knowing full well what the Church of the long centuries has classically and consistently confessed as its faith, he repudiates or, at any rate, “opts out” on, one or more of these basic beliefs—the crux of the question being not his right of dissent but his right to repudiate while still professing to defend the faith of the Church Universal?

Or, is there integrity if persistently he is content to mirror from his pulpit (which in fact is not his but God’s) certain congenial facets of the biblical revelation, while he disinclines to “explore the Book” with all ravenous fidelity, forever reminding himself that he is set where he is to “declare the whole counsel of God”?

The man who preaches must be a craftsman. But the craftsman must have character—else his craftsmanship becomes craftiness.