Page 5389 – Christianity Today (2024)

Historically, Mexican Protestants have been poorer people. This unusual church has broken the class barrier.

Fifteen miles south of Monterrey, Mexico, rising above the sand and scrub along the National Highway, stands a huge building topped by a mosque-style spire. It looks like a castle. Curious motorists often drive in for a closer look and discover that El Castillo del Rey (Castle of the King) is a church.

And an unusual church it is. Some 1,000 people worship at the Castle every Sunday, and the congregation is growing by about 25 converts each week. The church sponsors 100 weekly Bible studies in and around Monterrey, and has about 150 people enrolled in a Tuesday night Bible institute. It has a staff of 60 who teach Sunday school, and a group of university students who live in the Castle as part of a three-year discipleship institute.

Church members have made an impact in Monterrey through prison, orphanage, and street evangelism ministries.

Historically, Protestant Mexicans are linked with poor, storefront churches. The Castle is unique not only in size and outreach, but in its predominantly middle-and upper-class congregation.

The six-story, 17-room structure was started about 20 years ago by a wealthy philanthropist who wanted to gather students from all over the world to debate and seek answers to the world’s great problems. After battling labor union disputes and suffering the death of his wife, the founder moved on to the U.S., his dream unfulfilled.

Several years later, Roger and Maria Wolcott, missionaries to Peru, returned to serve in Monterrey where Roger, the son of a Union (English) Church pastor, had grown up. Their ministry started growing when Maria led the owner of the city’s Holiday Inn to the Lord. The excited woman invited friends to her hotel suite and asked Maria to present the gospel to them also. Several committed their lives to Christ, thus forming a solid nucleus for a women’s Bible study.

Later, a couple’s study started meeting on Sunday nights in a corner of the Union Church sanctuary and eventually expanded to standing room only. Thirteen young people meeting for discipleship opened the doors to friends, and attendance jumped to 150. Attenders of the various groups began asking for all the services of a church—marriages, funerals, baptisms.

With this in mind, Wolcott pulled together a group of spiritually mature men to study biblical principles for forming a church. Six elders were elected from within this group.

Agustín Villarreal, who now owned the abandoned castle, attended services held at Union Church. When he learned of the elders’ search for a church home, he gave them a free lease on the property, with the option to buy.

A massive facelift began. Years of disuse had turned the castle into a spooky hangout for bats, rats, and vandals. Ray Bedwell, who was discipling the young people, began taking in church work groups from his home state of Indiana. Mike Dragon, also from Indiana, directed the maintenance, construction, and remodeling. “Every castle needs a dragon,” he quipped.

Donations of money, materials, and labor flowed in. On Easter Sunday 1979, the congregation met for its first worship service in the restored castle, filling the 250-capacity meeting room.

In the weeks and months following, worshipers filled adjacent rooms, listening to the sermon on portable speakers. In 1982 a new sanctuary was opened, with the capacity to seat 700. Since then the Castle has had to offer two morning services, and plans are under consideration for a yet-larger sanctuary.

What has taken place here?

The Castle definitely has a family aura, which blends well with Latin culture. Members hug and share together. Bedwell calls the church “mildly charismatic.” There is freedom within the worship service for the exercise of spiritual gifts, but the church leaders require that biblical principles of order be followed.

A typical service at the Castle may last three hours, with the congregation standing for song and praise during the first half. Members of the congregation range from the city’s most popular TV personality to a gypsy patriarch and his clan.

The future of the Castle remains to be seen. Such rapid growth may bring some headaches along with the blessings. Weekly elders meetings are indispensable, says Bedwell, because “things are happening so fast. We’re just trying to keep on top of it.”

After all these years, the Castle is fulfilling the original owner’s vision in a way he never envisioned.

“They were going to talk about the world’s problems,” says Bedwell. “We talk about the answers.”

JOHN MAUSTin Monterrey, Mexico

In Singapore, Vandals Turn To Evangelism

Fifteen years ago Peter Chao was the leader of the Eagles, a gang of Singaporean teenagers organized for the purpose of vandalism. At the time, Singapore’s youth were battling the frustrations that accompany modernization.

Now the transition is over. Prospering Singapore—at the tip of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia—hardly fits the stereotype of a Third World nation. And the Eagles have changed as well. Chao is still the leader, but the group’s purpose has switched from vandalism to evangelism.

Chao’s conversion to Christianity at the age of 14 was followed by the conversion of several members of his gang. The former vandals launched a successful indigenous Christian ministry that continues to make the gospel relevant in Singapore.

The former gang leader and his new Christian brothers and sisters began to hold informal gatherings for worship.

Those gatherings led to evangelistic meetings and concerts that filled some of Singapore’s largest hotel ballrooms. In 1975 they sponsored a massive city-wide crusade. Those who became Christians were channeled into local churches. Still teenagers, the Eagles carried on their evangelistic ministry with little guidance from established Christian organizations.

Chao and three members of his group eventually earned degrees from Bible schools, and in 1977 the group was incorporated as Eagles Evangelism. Since then the ministry has continued to expand.

In Singapore, where Buddhism and Taoism predominate, Christians make up only about 10 percent of the population. But Christianity is the country’s fastest-growing religion. According to government publications—and considering the work of groups such as Eagles Evangelism—its prospects for continued growth are good.

Meanwhile, the Bible student who is doing 40 years for murder becomes the prison “preacher.”

Three years ago, Steven Linscott, a 26-year-old student at Emmaus Bible School in Oak Park, Illinois, said he had an unusually vivid dream of a woman being beaten to death. On the night of his dream, just a few blocks away, a young woman was murdered in her apartment.

A few days later, Linscott learned that some of the facts matched his dream. He had never considered himself a psychic, but he visited the police anyway. Instead of contributing to the solution, Linscott became the solution. Because of the similarities, the police charged Linscott with the murder, and in June 1982, he was convicted. He is now serving a 40-year sentence at Centralia Correctional Institute in Centralia, Illinois (CT, Feb. 4, 1983).

His friends and relatives were incredulous at the verdict. Hundreds who have rallied behind him believe the first trial was mishandled and they refuse to rest in their quest for a new one. More than a year after Linscott’s imprisonment, Illinois Governor James Thompson still receives a steady flow of letters on Linscott’s behalf. The Linscotts’ lawyer, Thomas Decker, has filed for an appeal, but the wheels are turning slowly. The state’s attorney’s office, which was due to respond to Decker’s brief in August, has been requesting, and getting, delays. A spokesman said more time is necessary because the case is important.

A lot has happened since the first trial. A large part of the prosecution’s original case was based on physical evidence against Linscott, namely, tests on his hair, blood, and other bodily fluids that did not prove his guilt, but failed to eliminate him as a suspect. Decker, who was not the original defense lawyer, charges that prosecuting attorneys knowingly misled the jury on the relevance of the tests. Today some of the nation’s top serologists and hair specialists are prepared to testify that the tests on the samples were far from conclusive. One of the prosecution’s scientific experts in the original trial now says his testimony was misapplied.

Meanwhile, Linscott supporters, in an effort to establish further reasonable doubt, are trying to come up with other suspects. Gordon Haresign, director of Bible correspondence at Emmaus when Linscott was arrested, has resigned and is writing a book about the case in consultation with Lynn Buzzard of the Christian Legal Society. Haresign argues that at least six people, all of whom had a motive and/or a record of violent behavior, were in the vicinity and had ample time and opportunity to have killed the victim.

Linscott himself has swung into the routine of prison life in Centralia. He is known as “the preacher” because of his outgoing expressions of faith. He leads a Bible study and frequently talks with other inmates about Christianity.

Linscott has a full-time job as associate editor of the prison newspaper, and when he can, he plays tennis and lifts weights. In the evenings he takes classes from professors from a local junior college. Once a week, for four hours, he sees his wife and three children.

Those who want to see Linscott free appeal not to his Christianity or to his pleasant nature in prison. They appeal to the facts of the case, facts they hope will see another day in court.

In the meantime, Linscott waits. “It’s been extremely difficult. I think about my children and I know they think of me. But we’ve always been optimistic. We’ve always believed the end is just around the corner, that God will not allow this to go on much longer.”

In this Year of the Bible, the Committee for International Goodwill has named Kenneth Taylor “Man of the Year.” Taylor’s Bible paraphrase, The Living Bible, has sold 28 million copies. The committee that honored Taylor is described as an “international organization of men dedicated to promoting peace on earth through the transforming power of Jesus Christ.” Each year it names an outstanding Christian leader “Man of the Year.”

Linda Doll, former editor of His magazine, is now director of InterVarsity Press, the publishing division of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

David Neff, an assistant editor under Doll, is now editor of His, which last year was named “Periodical of the Year” by the Evangelical Press Association.

Evangelicals Support Reagan’S Re-Election, But Only Narrowly

Political diversity among evangelicals is evident in new survey results showing narrow margins of support for President Reagan over two Democratic contenders for the presidency. In a match-up with John Glenn, 41.3 percent prefer Reagan while 37.2 percent would support Glenn. Against Walter Mondale, the President attracts 47 percent and Mondale, 33.8 percent. (Numbers don’t add up to 100 percent because some respondents were undecided.)

The poll, conducted in June, surveyed by telephone 1,000 voters who said they “personally believed that Jesus Christ was a real person who … was the unique Son of God” and “believed that a person needs to accept Christ as Savior to attain salvation” or say they are “born again.” It was conducted by V. Lance Tarrance and Associates of Houston, Texas, and commissioned by the Free Congress Foundation, the hub of the New Right in Washington, D.C., led by Paul M. Weyrich.

The projected margins for the 1984 election are very similar to these voters’ preferences in the 1980 election, when 44.1 percent supported Reagan and 32.7 voted for Jimmy Carter. Some conservative groups believe it was the “born-again” bloc that gave Reagan his victory. In announcing these survey results, Stuart Rothenberg of the Free Congress Foundation’s Institute for Government and Politics said, “This sizeable constituency cannot be taken for granted by any candidate next year.”

Whether Christians form a “natural constituency” for anyone, as the right wing insists, is questionable, however. This survey corroborates Gallup findings that more than half of all evangelicals are registered Democrats, and their actual voting habits tilt even more heavily toward the Democrats.

Differences on issues were also apparent in the survey results. Abortion on demand is opposed by 53.8 percent, while 68.2 percent believe abortion should be legal under some circ*mstances. Questions on tuition tax credits and defense spending revealed split opinions, while 91.7 percent favor voluntary prayer in public schools.

By a slight margin, more evangelicals say their religious convictions will influence their vote in 1984 (56.9 percent) than in 1980 (50.92 percent). Fundamentalists, representing about 2 percent of the sample, may rely more heavily on their religious convictions, with 66.5 percent saying their beliefs will be an important determinant of their vote. People identified as fundamentalists in the poll said they generally describe themselves with that label when discussing their religious beliefs.

Senators Honor A New Translation Of The Bible

President Reagan, three U.S. senators, and the ambassador of Ghana paid tribute to the work of Bible translators at a ceremony marking Bible Translation Day in Washington on September 30.

Reagan did not make a personal appearance, but he sent a letter of congratulations to Elaine Townsend, widow of Cameron Townsend who founded Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1934. The letter, delivered by Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oreg.), noted that the work of translation “serves as a powerful force for literacy” in the world.

Hatfield, along with Senators William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.) and Jennings Randolph (D-W.Va.), hosted the occasion in a Senate caucus room. Brandishing a Bible, Armstrong said the purpose of translation is to “lift up this book.” Bible Translation Day has been observed annually since 1969 when a congressional joint resolution proposed by Hatfield, among others, was approved.

The newest Wycliffe translation, published last May, is a Hanga New Testament, bringing to 200 the total languages to which they have contributed Bibles. Geoffrey and Rosemary Hunt completed the Hanga translation after 12 years in Ghana, where this tribal language had never before been written.

At the Capitol Hill ceremony, the Hunts presented a copy of the New Testament in Hanga to Ambassador Eric K. Otoo of Ghana. Although he does not speak Hanga, Otoo thanked the Hunts and noted that his country’s campaign for literacy has been greatly accelerated by the work of Bible translators.

Townsend observed that 3,000 language groups around the world still lack Bibles and said, “We are here to rededicate ourselves to this unfinished task.” Wycliffe has projects under way among 780 language groups in 40 countries.

Pastors, Others Dismissed Over Nazarene Policy Against Tongues

The Church of the Nazarene dropped the word “Pentecostal” from its name in 1919 because the denomination opposed the practice of speaking in tongues. Sixty-four years later the church again is embroiled in the issue.

The Nazarene General Court of Appeals is reviewing the case of Danny Brady, an Ohio minister who was defrocked and expelled from the denomination after he told his congregation he spoke in tongues. Brady isn’t the first Nazarene pastor to be dismissed over the tongues issue. But his is the first such case to be appealed to the church’s highest judicial body.

Last July a district board of discipline found Brady guilty of teaching doctrine that is “out of harmony” with Nazarene beliefs. He says the ruling has no basis since the denomination’s official manual doesn’t address the issue of tongues.

Nazarene General Secretary B. Edgar Johnson agrees that the denominational manual includes no policy on tongues. But he says a 1971 statement against tongues, formulated by the church’s Board of General Superintendents, is binding on the membership.

That statement holds that the gift of tongues was valid only in the early church. “… People practicing ‘tongues speaking’ or promoting it in any way should be encouraged and advised to seek membership elsewhere unless they are willing to discontinue their practice …,” the statement says.

Johnson says “two or three” Nazarene ministers who indicated support for speaking in tongues have been “removed from assignments of leadership” this year. Earlier this year four instructors at Mid-America Nazarene College in Olathe, Kansas, were asked to resign over the tongues issue.

Brady says God directed him to try to remain in the Church of the Nazarene. As a result, he says he is appealing his case out of obedience to God.

Based on a review of the documents from the earlier trial, the church’s appeals court could order a retrial or sustain Brady’s dismissal. If the court upholds the ruling of the board of discipline, Brady says he will consider filing a class action suit.

The Soviet government’s harassment of Christians seems to be on the upswing. London’s Keston News Service reports that rearrests of unregistered Baptists are a sign of a trend toward isolating religious groups. Keston also reports searches of believers’ homes for “forbidden literature,” including Bibles. Meanwhile, Timothy Chmykhalov, one of the “Siberian Seven,” is appealing to Christians to help in his campaign to bring to the West his mother-in-law and her two daughters. Chmykhalov now lives in Dallas, Texas.

Guatemala’s human rights record has worsened since the overthrow in August of President Efraín Ríos Montt, says the Washington Office on Latin America. WOLA, which supports leftist groups in Guatemala, reports that at least 80 people have disappeared, and thousands have been imprisoned for “subversive activity, since the rightist administration of Mejia Victores took power from Ríos Montt.”

An evangelical agency in Peru has won $10,000 in prize money for its work in literacy. The agency, Alfalit, represented Peru in competition for the Iraq Literacy Award 1983. Peru was among four nations honored out of 34 that entered the annual competition. Working through local, evangelical churches in Peru, Alfalit trained nearly 500 volunteer literacy teachers and some 3,500 people to read and write. The agency is a part of the Costa Rican-based Alfalit International, which works in 13 Latin nations.

Leaders of South Africa’s three largest interracial denominations have urged rejection of proposed constitutional changes that would give the country’s Indians and coloreds (mixed races) their own national assemblies. The denominations—Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Methodist—say the plan could lead to greater separation and division. It would continue to exclude the nation’s 22 million blacks from a major political role.

Three Christian schools were shut down by the Ethiopian government in August.

According to Christian Response International, Ethiopia’s revolutionary Marxist regime is responsible for taking over the facilities of Comboni College and two other schools without compensation.

Bangladesh continues to battle mass malnutrition. Dramatic increases in rice production in the last decade have been offset by extreme population growth. Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world. According to government statistics, the average 18-year-old male stands at five feet, three inches, and weighs only 97 pounds.

The Presbyterian Church of Brazil has rejected a relationship with the recently formed Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The Brȧzilian church broke 114-year-old relations with the southern-based Presbyterian Church U.S. because of the merger between PCUS and the United Presbyterian Church. The Brazilian body broke ties with the United Presbyterian Church in 1972 over sharp differences in mission philosophy. Church officials say it is still a dividing issue.

Onagers—the wild asses mentioned in the Bible—are once again loping across the Negev Desert. Eight onagers were released by the Israel Nature Reserves Authority, culminating a 20-year plan to revive the Middle Eastern wild ass. This is the first time a species of Bible-era animals, carefully bred in captivity, has been returned to the wild.

Some 70 Soviet Pentecostalists are trying to follow in the footsteps of the Siberian Seven. According to religious sources in Moscow, 17 families from a remote village in eastern Siberia have started a mass protest in an effort to emigrate to the West. In a typewritten message, the protesting villagers said they were beginning a graduated fast. They are protesting the heavy fines and short jail terms that Soviet authorities levied against villagers who held unauthorized religious services.

For the First time in South Africa’s history, nonwhites may soon have a role in national government. South Africa’s parliament has developed a new constitution granting such authorization. The country’s white electorate is expected to give its approval in a referendum early in November. If the constitution is rejected, it will be the most severe setback for the governing National Party in 35 years of uninterrupted rule.

When beverage alcohol was outlawed from 1919 to 1933, prohibitionists had to credit part of their success to pressure from Protestant churches. Today, concern about alcohol abuse is rising again in many quarters, and those who are facing the problem are looking to the churches for help. This time, however, the response is less than wholehearted.

The scientists and health professionals who are speaking out on alcohol problems complain that they receive little help from major denominations. Dan Beauchamp, a University of Michigan health-planning professor and leader in the movement, would like to see churches take a greater role in the effort.

“I am powerfully disappointed that no major denomination has taken an active interest in this issue,” said the United Church of Christ layman. “I think the churches are still afraid of this issue. Their fear is that they’ll revive latent prohibitionism in their denominations.”

George Hacker, of an ad hoc group called the National Alcohol Tax Coalition, also believes churches are shy of getting a prohibitionist label. He and Beauchamp believe the churches may be coming around, however.

With or without church support, actions to reduce alcohol abuse are increasing. A federally funded study last year urged the development of a campaign to reduce drinking. Set up by the National Research Council, the study called for such actions as stiff taxation on liquor and a national campaign to encourage moderate drinking rather than alcohol abuse.

In another development, the National Council on Alcoholism, traditionally linked to the liquor industry, has removed industry members from its board. At its annual meeting last spring, the council vowed to campaign for higher taxes on liquor, mandatory treatment for alcoholics, and warning labels on liquor bottles. The American Medical Association has backed the call for warning labels, particularly to alert pregnant women to the possible health risk to their unborn babies.

Opinion polls show that a majority of Americans support government action against alcohol abuse. In a Gallup poll last year, 56 percent of those surveyed favored doubling the tax on at least one type of alcoholic beverage. A larger number, 61 percent, favored the labeling of calories and ingredients on liquor bottles. And 68 percent favored a nationwide educational campaign to discourage alcohol abuse.

Public support for higher taxes on alcohol is growing. Last July a coalition of some 100 consumer, health, and religious groups held a news conference to demand the doubling of alcohol excise taxes. The taxes haven’t been increased since 1951.

In the United States, drunkenness is a factor in a majority of deaths caused by falls, drownings, fire accidents, and spouse beatings, and in half of all traffic fatalities. It is estimated that deaths caused by alcohol run between 50,000 and 200,000 annually. The cost of alcohol abuse—in medical bills, property damage, and time lost from work—was estimated at $100 billion in 1982.

The problem is not limited to the United States. In a survey of 80 nations last year, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) cited “a swing back of public opinion, away from complete liberalization and towards a reasonable degree of alcohol control.”

As an indication of the scope of the problem, WHO reported an increase in beer consumption of 500 percent in Asia, 400 percent in Africa, and 200 percent in Latin America. “The evidence of increasing damage in a large number of developing countries suggests alcohol-related problems constitute an important obstacle to their socioeconomic development, are are likely to overwhelm their health resources unless appropriate measures are taken,” the organization said.

RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE

National Baptists Reaffirm Their Support For Civil Rights Activism

America’s largest black denomination has reaffirmed its year-old commitment to civil rights and social action. The 6.8-million-member National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., reelected Theodore Judson “T.J.” Jemison as its president.

First elected last year, Jemison has directed the denomination away from the conservative leadership of its former president, Joseph H. Jackson. Jackson, who headed the church for 29 years, opposed civil disobedience and other forms of nonviolent protest advocated by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. As a result, King led about 500,000 members out of the denomination in 1961 to form the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Jemison, whose father was president of the convention before Jackson was elected in 1953, organized America’s first bus boycott in the early 1950s. The protest forced the integration of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, public transportation system.

Elected in September to his second term as president, Jemison, 63, told the church’s annual convention: “We will not try to become a political organization … or a civil rights organization. But when you deal with people, you can’t leave out politics and civil rights. You must lead the way.”

In addition to his commitment to civil rights, Jemison wants his denomination to carry out an evangelistic campaign aimed at winning three million persons to Christ. He also has led his denomination into broadened participation in the National and World Councils of Churches. At the same time, he is reaching out to leaders of other black churches. Jemison is one of the organizers of next year’s National Assembly of Black Churches. A possible business item to be considered by the assembly is the creation of a national bank to serve American blacks.

“The black church is the answer, more or less, to black problems,” Jemison has said, “and we have the opportunity to turn this entire nation toward what we believe is right.

“We believe that the church, the black church, is historically the focus of power within our race.… The solution to problems in black America can be found within the black community. We must shoulder our own responsibility.”

The proposed national bank would draw from the financial resources of black churches. The money generated by the bank would help provide jobs and economic development in black communities across the country.

A standing ovation for a liberal.

Not since David went to live among the Philistines have adversaries treated one another so cordially—at least in the short run. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has every reason for avoiding the Moral Majority, to which he is the apotheosis of liberalism. Yet last month he boarded Jerry Falwell’s private jet, flew to Lynchburg, Virginia, and told a rapt crowd of 5,000 why he disagrees with Falwell’s political organization.

Kennedy discussed major issues of contention—nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion—and he criticized Moral Majority’s name for implying that “only one set of public policies is moral.” People with a deep faith, Kennedy cautioned, “may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept.”

He quoted Falwell directly as having written, “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Kennedy said, “There is no one in the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I have. Yet I do not doubt the faith of those on the other side. Their error is not one of religion, but of policy.”

Overall, however, the 3,000-word speech was nonaccusatory and emphasized the need for respect. “I believe there surely is such a thing as truth,” Kennedy said at the outset, “but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?” After the audience—4,000 of whom were Liberty Baptist College students—gave Kennedy a standing ovation, Falwell joked that he would have to win back some of his students.

Before Kennedy’s evening appearance, he dined at Falwell’s home, and afterward attended a reception. No future get-togethers are planned at this point, but spokesmen for both Kennedy and Falwell say they are open to the idea. Moral Majority spokesman Cal Thomas said the Lynchburg occasion was “very positive and warm,” and is a step toward “disarming ideologues on both sides.” Thomas commented, “Sadat went to Jerusalem and now Kennedy has come to Lynchburg.”

It was Thomas who inadvertently brought about the Kennedy visit. A computer error in Lynchburg caused a plastic Moral Majority membership card to be sent to the senator’s office. When Thomas heard about it, he wrote a quick note that included a perfunctory invitation to Kennedy to stop by if he happened to be in the area.

To the profound surprise of everyone in Lynchburg, Kennedy accepted, and wanted to speak to the Liberty students. Although he has been critical of right-wing ideas and approaches throughout his political career, Kennedy has not attacked Falwell or Moral Majority by name in the past. His deputy press aide, Melody Miller, said “he doesn’t deal in personalities” and, unlike some other critics, “believes there is lots of room for religious involvement in public debate.”

After the speech, “a number of students said he made them think,” Miller added.

Excerpts From Kennedy’S Speech

I have come here to discuss my beliefs about faith and country, tolerance and truth in America. I know we begin with certain disagreements; I strongly suspect that at the end of the evening some of our disagreements will remain. But I also hope that tonight and in the months and years ahead, we will always respect the right of others to differ—that we will never lose sight of our own fallibility—that we will view ourselves with a sense of perspective and a sense of humor. After all, in the New Testament, even the disciples had to be taught to look first to the beam in their own eyes, and only then to the mote in their neighbor’s eye.

I am mindful of that counsel. I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct—or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?…

A generation ago, a presidential candidate had to prove his independence of undue religious influence in public life—and he had to do so partly at the insistence of evangelical Protestants. John Kennedy said at that time: “I believe in an America where there is no [religious] bloc voting of any kind.” Only 20 years later, another candidate was appealing to an evangelical meeting as a religious bloc. Ronald Reagan said to 15,000 evangelicals at the Roundtable in Dallas: “I know that you can’t endorse me. I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”

To many Americans, that pledge was a sign and a symbol of a dangerous breakdown in the separation of church and state. Yet this principle, as vital as it is, is not a simplistic and rigid command. Separation of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political power. The challenge today is to recall the origin of the principle, to define its purpose, and refine its application to the politics of the present.…

The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone’s freedom is at risk. Those who favor censorship should recall that one of the first books ever burned was the first English translation of the Bible. As President Eisenhower warned in 1953, “Don’t join the bookburners … the right to say ideas, the right to record them, and the right to have them accessible to others is unquestioned—or this isn’t America.” And if that right is denied, at some future day the torch can be turned against any other book or any other belief. Let us never forget: today’s Moral Majority could become tomorrow’s persecuted minority.

The danger is as great now as when the founders of the nation first saw it. In 1789, their fear was of factional strife among dozens of denominations. Today there are hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of faiths, and millions of Americans who are outside any fold. Pluralism obviously does not and cannot mean that all of them are right; but it does mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read and to do.…

The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be inherently individual ones or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. In such cases—cases like Prohibition and abortion—the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

People of conscience should be careful how they deal in the word of their Lord. In our own history, religion has been falsely invoked to sanction prejudice and even slavery, to condemn labor unions and public spending for the poor.… I respectfully suggest that God has taken no position on the Department of Education—and that a balanced budget constitutional amendment is a matter for economic analysis, not heavenly appeals.…

Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its views, but from its name—which, in the minds of many, seems to imply that only one set of public policies is moral—and only one majority can possibly be right. Similarly, people are and should be perplexed when the religious lobbying group Christian Voice publishes a morality index of congressional voting records—which judges the morality of senators by their attitude toward Zimbawe and Taiwan.

Let me offer another illustration. Dr. Falwell has written—and I quote: “To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Now there is no one in the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I have. Yet I do not doubt the faith of those on the other side. Their error is not one of religion, but of policy—and I hope to persuade them that they are wrong in terms of both America’s interest and the justice of Israel’s cause.

Respect for conscience is most in jeopardy—and the harmony of our diverse society is most at risk—when we reestablish, directly or indirectly, a religious test for public office. That relic of the colonial era, which is specifically prohibited in the Constitution, has reappeared in recent years. After the last election, the Rev. James Robison warned President Reagan not to surround himself, as Presidents before him had, “with the counsel of the ungodly.” I utterly reject any such standard for any position anywhere in public service. Two centuries ago, the victims were Catholics and Jews. In the 1980s, the victims could be atheists; in some other day or decade, they could be the members of the Thomas Road Baptist Church. Indeed, in 1976 I regarded it as unworthy and un-American when some people said or hinted that Jimmy Carter should not be President because he was a born-again Christian. We must never judge the fitness of individuals to govern on the basis of where they worship, whether they follow Christ or Moses, whether they are called “born again” or “ungodly.” Where it is right to apply moral values to public life, let all of us avoid the temptation to be self-righteous and absolutely certain of ourselves.…

We sorely test our ability to live together if we too readily question each other’s integrity. It may be harder to restrain our feelings when moral principles are at stake—for they go to the deepest wellspring of our being. But the more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are, the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency of our fellow citizens on the other side.

Those who favor ERA are not “antifamily” or “blasphemers,” and their purpose is not “an attack on the Bible.” Rather we believe this is the best way to fix in our national firmament the ideal that not only all men, but all people, are created equal. Indeed, my mother—who strongly favors ERA—would be surprised to hear that she is antifamily. For my part, I think of the amendment’s opponents as wrong on the issue, but not as lacking in moral character.

I could multiply the instances of name calling, sometimes on both sides. Dr. Falwell is not a “warmonger”—and “liberal clergymen” are not as the Moral Majority suggested in a recent letter, equivalent to “Soviet sympathizers.” The critics of official prayer in public schools are not “Pharisees”; many of them are both civil libertarians and believers, who think that families should pray more at home with their children, and attend church and synagogue more faithfully. And people are not “sexist” because they stand against abortion; they are not “murderers” because they believe in free choice.…

North American Scene

A Texas doctor has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a Texas court for drowning a live-born fetus. After a July 1979 abortion, according to five of his former employees, Raymond Showery wrapped the baby’s face in the placenta, submerged the body in a pail of water, put it into a plastic garbage bag, and discarded it. Showery pleaded innocent, claiming the incident never occurred. The court decision was unusual in that the body of the victim was not produced as evidence in the case, since it had been disposed of. His lawyer said the conviction would be appealed.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair does not have and never has had before the Federal Communications Commission a petition that threatens to remove religious broadcasting from the airwaves. Nevertheless, letters of protest still flow into the FCC at the rate of 135,000 a month. Many of them come from members of conservative churches. Since 1975, the FCC has received nearly 16 million pieces of mail about the alleged petition.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a man whose 12-year-old daughter is undergoing court-ordered treatment for cancer. Since mid-September, Pamela Hamilton has been receiving chemotherapy for a huge, cancerous tumor on her leg. Doctors said that without treatment she would die within three months. The girl’s father, Larry, a Church of God pastor, says only God can cure his daughter and that she should not be receiving medical treatment. The treatment was ordered by a state appeals court.

Representatives of four major Protestant agencies have condemned recent Senate action to establish diplomatic ties with the Vatican. The National Council of Churches, National Association of Evangelicals, Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State say the Senate action is an official show of preference for the Catholic church. The Senate voted in September to repeal a 116-year-old ban on funds to support the diplomatic mission.

The number of clergywomen in the Episcopal church more than doubled during 1982, rising from 215 to 555. The total number of Episcopal clergy is about 3,000.

The Saturday Evening Post will no longer accept tobacco advertising, starting with its March 1984 issue. Since the Post was purchased by the Benjamin Franklin Society in January of 1982, the question of whether to continue advertising tobacco products has been at the forefront. The society is a nonprofit corporation that disseminates medical and nutritional knowledge to support research on cancer and other diseases. The magazine also carries Christian-oriented articles. “We believe in placing Christianity in a positive and favorable light,” says religion editor Robert Silvers.

Just a few days before he died, Catholic Cardinal Terence Cooke wrote a letter condemning mercy killing and reaffirming his commitment to the sanctity of life. “Life is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, physical or mental diseases, loneliness or old age,” he wrote. In another letter, the cardinal urged the Irish-American community to work for peace and reconciliation.

Some 15,000 demonstrators from American and West German churches gathered last month to protest the planned deployment of Pershing II missiles in West Germany. The rally was planned to coincide with an official celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the first German settlement in America. Organizers of the demonstration said they, not the official celebrants, truly represented the pacifist beliefs of the original German settlers.

Bread For the World has thrown its weight behind the Human Needs and World Security bill, which, if enacted, would halt increases in foreign military aid. The Christian lobbying group contends that military aid, called “security aid,” hinders more than it enhances security. The bill would channel more foreign aid into programs that directly benefit poor people, BFW policy analyst Paul Nelson stresses the legislation would not affect U.S. defense spending. BFW hopes the bill will be introduced in both houses of Congress by year’s end.

National Bible Week will be observed November 20–27. In this forty-third annual observance, it will culminate the Year of the Bible, declared earlier this year by President Reagan. An interfaith celebration sponsored by the Laymen’s National Bible Committee, National Bible Week is observed to motivate interest in Bible reading and study.

The Supreme Court takes up the issue of nativity scenes.

Christmas season arrived early at the Supreme Court, where on the second day of their current session the justices heard arguments for and against a state-sponsored nativity display in Rhode Island. The case, Lynch v. Donnelly, promises to be an important indicator of the court’s church-state positioning when a decision comes, sometime before next summer.

In two cases last term, the court upheld the right of state legislatures to employ chaplains. It also ruled in favor of Minnesota’s tuition tax-deduction law for private school students. To some observers, this signals a rethinking among the justices and a willingness to give more weight to considerations such as “longstanding tradition,” as they did in the Nebraska chaplain case. The Christmas créche case also pits tradition against claims of church-state entanglement.

Lawyers who favor the créche’s constitutionality believe it is an inextricable part of Christmas, which is a federally recognized holiday. Removing any hint of Christ’s birth from a Christmas display amounts to “cultural censorship and intellectual dishonesty,” U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee told the court.

Opponents, including a group of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, taxpayers and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), say the life-size display violates all three constitutional tests of religious establishment.

It does so, they say, because, first, the nativity scene has a religious rather than a secular purpose; second, its effect is to “advance religion,” and, third, the government excessively entangles itself with religion by paying for and promoting the display, they say.

This three-part test, used since 1971 to weigh claims of free religious exercise against possible state establishment, was applied differently by the two leading proponents of the nativity scene, adding to the intrigue. William F. McMahon, attorney for the mayor of Pawtucket, argued that the créche adheres to the three-part test because in the larger context of the city’s total Christmas display, any possible religious purpose or effect is nullified.

To put the controversy in perspective, McMahon told the court that the city’s annual display takes up 40,000 square feet and includes the whole range of attendant secular symbols: a lighted spruce tree, a live Santa Claus, stars, bells, a wishing well, snowmen, and a variety of Walt Disney characters. In the midst of all this is a 140-square-foot area with a stable and manger scene that includes wise men, angels, and animals, along with the traditional representations of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus.

Christmas has become “a secular folk festival” in which the nativity theme is interwoven, McMahon said. Emphasizing that Christmas is “a dominantly secular holiday with religious roots and components,” McMahon asked the court, “What is the government [in Pawtucket] doing? It is not promoting religion, it is celebrating Christmas,” and thus it satisfies the Constitution by having a secular purpose and effect.

Solicitor General Lee, intervening for Pawtucket in behalf of the Reagan administration, followed a different line of reasoning that he said makes the three-part test irrelevant in this case. He charged two lower courts, which ruled in favor of the taxpayers and the ACLU, with mandating a “contrived exclusion of religion from our public life.” McMahon, concurring with this, said, “It is impermissible for government to put Christ in Christmas or take Christ out. Strict neutrality requires Christ to be there because of tradition.”

In presenting his case, Lee acknowledged much more readily than McMahon the religious significance of the display. If the court decides in favor of the créche, observers will be waiting to see whether they rely more on Lee’s arguments or on McMahon’s “folk festival” reasoning.

ACLU lawyer Amato A. DeLuca said religious purpose and intent are undeniably part of the créche because of the worshipful attitude of the figures and the implied divinity of Christ.

By backing a uniquely Christian symbol, DeLuca’s brief said, the city of Pawtucket also may be setting itself up for possible political divisiveness among its residents. DeLuca based this argument on the large number of letters Pawtucket Mayor Dennis Lynch has received in the wake of the initial court challenge to the créche in 1981. The letters, many of which were strongly emotional and expressive, voiced considerable support for the nativity display.

DeLuca was peppered with questions from the justices about other instances where government and religion overlap. What about chaplains in state legislatures—found to be legal by the Court in its last term? DeLuca replied that their role is “purely symbolic” and said their prayers merely “draw attention” and serve as “a formalized way of commencing a session.”

What about the elaborate stone sculptures on the walls of the Supreme Court chamber itself that represent the Ten Commandments? asked Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor. DeLuca said they are constitutional because they represent the origin of law. O’Connor shot back with what may be a telling indication of how she, at least, may reason. The state of Rhode Island, she reminded DeLuca, argues likewise that the créche symbolizes the origin of Christmas.

A bisexual nightmare from the National Council of Churches.

The publication last month of an “inclusive language” lectionary is guaranteed to pour oil on the flames of controversy that have engulfed the National Council of Churches (NCC) recently.

Lectionaries, collections of Bible readings from the Old Testament, the Epistles, and the Gospels, are used in Sunday worship services mostly by such liturgical ecclesiastical bodies as the Episcopal and Lutheran churches.

Using the Revised Standard Version (RSV), an 11-member committee of the Division of Education and Ministry of the NCC selected a year of readings and eliminated all references that use masculine words to refer to both men and women. Genesis 2:7, for example, says in the RSV, “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (italics added). In An Inclusive Language Lectionary, this verse becomes, “God the Sovereign One formed a human creature of dust from the ground, and breathed into the creature’s nostrils the breath of life; and the human creature became a living being.” Only when God causes a deep sleep to fall on the “human being and removes a rib in order to build a woman does “man” come into being.

Chaired by Old Testament professor Victor Roland Gold of Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley, California, the committee of 6 women and 5 men made three specific types of changes in the RSV text. Language for people was changed to include women as well as men. For example, “brethren” in such verses as Romans 8:12 becomes “brothers and sisters.” “Sons of God” becomes “children of God.” “Let your light so shine before men” in Matthew 5:16 becomes “Let your light so shine before others.”

More controversial are changes in language about Jesus, “Son of man” in the Old Testament, Gold argued, refers to the humanity of Ezekiel, so the lectionary for the sixteenth Sunday of Pentecost has God say to Ezekiel, “O mortal” instead of the more familiar “Son of man.” But New Testament scholars are not likely to feel happy with Jesus’ unique use of “Son of man” becoming “the Human One” in such verses as John 3:13.

The term “Son of God,” Dr. Gold added, refers to Jesus’ very close relationship to God, not to a biological relationship. In Matthew 4:3, therefore, the Devil says to Jesus, “If you are the Child of God, …”

Most controversial of all are references to God as both male and female. Readers familiar with the Bible are almost certain to object to the committee’s decision to make an addition to all texts that speak of “God the Father.” Christ’s exaltation occurred, according to the lectionary version of Philippians 2:11, so that “every tongue” should “confess that Jesus Christ is Sovereign, to the glory of God the Father [and Mother].” Although the appendix to the lectionary attempts to justify the addition as “an attempt to express in a fresh way the same intimacy, caring, and freedom” as Jesus felt for God, Christians familiar with the Bible will insist on principles of translation that are more faithful to what the original text actually says. Biblical scholars will insist that to impose on a translation a preconceived philosophical system, whether or not it is faithful to “the spirit of the gospel,” is to do eisegesis, not exegesis.

Quick opposition to the experimental lectionary has been developing, even within the NCC membership. The Lutheran Church in America is the largest Lutheran body in the United States and, with 3 million members, the third largest group within the NCC, James Crumley, its bishop, has advised his church to reject the lectionary. In a column prepared for his denominational magazine, Crumley wrote, “The overwhelming opinion [of Lutherans whose advice he sought] is that this translation does not meet the goals for inclusive language in a proper way because it is often inaccurate and sometimes written in a poor and inadequate linguistic style.”

He said further that “We must not attempt to make the Bible say only what we want it to say. The Bible is an historic document and has to be read and understood as such.” Crumley raised specific objections, including changing of “son” to “child” in reference to Jesus. “Why the hesitancy to call him son? After all, he was a male baby and grew into a man. We do not call grown men children.”

Evengelical scholars have questions as well. Douglas Moo, assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, said, “What disturbs me is that both the Old Testament and the New Testament use maleness for God, and this is not just a reflection of a patriarchal culture. It is a revelation of the way things are, in some sense.” He noted that obviously maleness in reference to God is not a precise analogy with human maleness. He also pointed out that many ancient religions worshiped female deities, and so to conclude that the Bible automatically is a product of its culture is invalid.

Theologian Carl F.H. Henry acknowledges that most of the Bible’s imagery about God is masculine, but he affirms that “the God of the Bible is a sexless God.” He further points out that the Bible is not without feminine imagery in some descriptions of God. But Henry stands firmly against the idea of modifying Scripture to suit contemporary cultural leanings. He has written, “The gender-uses of the inspired writers involve … important conceptual distinctions, even though they do not convey sexual connotations.” He continues, “The biblical linguistic precedents are to be considered normative for Christian theology.”

Why has the NCC produced an inclusive language lectionary? First of all, because a number of pastors have been asking the NCC to produce such a lectionary so they would not have to do it every week for themselves, according to the committee. More significantly, according to the Rev. Dr. Susan Thistle-thwaite, assistant professor of theology at the Boston University School of Theology and the theological member of the committee, the impetus does not come primarily from the modern feminist movement, “but from the biblical materials themselves.… Not only was Jesus astonishingly open to women, but he is fully incarnate in all of humanity, not just men.”

Committee member Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, professor of English at William Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey, argued that to keep excluding women from equality in the church is “sub-Christian.” “If God is always manlike, never womanlike, then men are godlike and women are not,” she said. She does not feel, however, that the lectionary will have more than a limited influence on evangelicals, “except perhaps through the rapidly growing Evangelical Women’s Caucus.”

NCC general secretary Claire Randall said there has been “a high decibel interest” in the new lectionary. There is no question that we have not heard the end of it yet.

New answers to this question are revolutionizing our views of marriage, murder, abortion, law, and even athletic salaries.

Is all the paperwork and ceremony associated with marriage really necessary? What is so wrong with a live-in arrangement?

We bridle at such questions, but hot feeling is not enough when we are talking with an acquaintance who shares an apartment with his girlfriend. Just why do Christians see marriage as something more than a convenient relationship between two human beings? The reason seems to be rooted in a whole different way of looking at life.

The issue is not marriage itself, but our basic outlook on life, and especially on authority. We might face much the same problem in talking with that same acquaintance about murder, abortion, law, or athletic salaries.

Interlocking Universe

To understand the present-day division we need to take a quick look at the past. Greek philosophy from Plato’s time taught that the universe is ordered and structured, a System of interlocking systems. In a similar approach, Christian theology would say Scripture teaches about one Lord God who created the world, gave the moral law at Sinai, inspired the prophets of the Old Testament, redeemed the world through Christ, and is the consumator of all things. We can call creation, law, inspiration, holy history, salvation, and consumation systems within one System.

Western culture has been held together, in a sloppy way, by a profound belief that there was some kind of interlocking system, or else one Lord God. This basic viewpoint underlies the West’s political and economic thought, as well as its idea of ethics, value, and beauty. Leonardo da Vinci’s definition of a work of art as “a shadow of the divine perfection” is based on such convictions. Morality is not, on this view, a series of conventional maxims, but stems from the nature of the universe. Moral principles carry the “sanction of the universe.” They are part of the structure of reality. Human beings find peace, stability, order, contentment, and salvation to the degree that their personal lives are in harmony with the divine Order.

Marriage is also part of the System. It belongs to the “order of life,” which also entails the moral order. The sanction of marriage is to be found in this context, and is therefore much more than a relationship of convenience (among many possible ones); marriage is not to be reduced to the level of society’s customs.

No! Say The Nominalists

The opposite opinion to any such structured viewpoint carries the philosophical name of nominalism. In the history of human ideas it is associated with William Ockham, a philosopher-theologian of the Middle Ages. Ockham affirmed against the interlocking idea that the universe is composed only of particular items like sticks, stones, chairs, cats, dogs, trees, and so on. There is no inner structure of things, no cosmic glue, no world order. God is interpreted as the unique sovereign Particular who governs the world through arbitrarily chosen rules. The only guideline is that rules must be consistent with each other.

Parenthetically, we must note that nominalists have objected to a concept of world order on the grounds that it supports wicked kings, corrupt dictators, and oppressive practices in business, employment, and social relationships. This may be the case in the philosophical versions, but not in the biblical one. In Scripture, the prophets were the inspired critics of the political, economic, and social order. In fact, established political criticism emerges in history for the first time in Israel. All aspects of the System or world order as they are concretely worked out in society are under the criticism of the prophetic word. Therefore, there is no order for the sake of order, or power for the sake of power, that can make an absolute appeal.

The cultural explosions of the Renaissance of the fourteenth century and the Enlightenment of the eighteenth did much to unravel the idea of a structural universe, including the biblical doctrine of the one God who is Lord of creation, history, morality, and redemption. However, since World War II the rate of attrition of such concepts has skyrocketed. It is all a very complicated story, and we are limiting ourselves to the central element and how it has so deeply disturbed the concept of authority. The solitary point we want to make is the eventual triumph of nominalism.

Contemporary people need not have a clear philosophy of nominalism in their minds to show the result of such thinking. Nor do we mean that this mentality is produced only by philosophical reflection. Rather, factors contributing to its formation include the development of the sciences, technology, educational systems, the growth of vast population centers, the nature of the business community, the anonymity of large cities, and perhaps even literature and the entertainment world. But whether nominalism is arrived at by reflection or the pragmatisms of life, the contours are the same.

Effect On Marriage

As abstract as this discussion may appear, the consequences of the triumph of nominalism are enormous, affecting the character of Western culture and deeply eroding the concept of authority. The Golden Rule of nominalism is that there are only particulars. There is no cosmic glue, no System of systems, no overarching principles of justice, morality, beauty, or truth. There is no God who is Lord, Creator, Redeemer, Consummator.

If that is the case, then—to pick out one item among many—marriage is only a relationship of convenience. If marriage is only that, divorce is the remedy for a marriage that proves inconvenient. When deep in its bones (or subconsciousness) a population eventually interprets marriage and divorce in this purely nominalistic fashion, the divorce rate skyrockets.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century there was still a strong feeling in America about a world order that included a moral order. At that time, it would have been unthinkable for a divorced person to be President of the United States. Yet our current President is such a person. This could happen only because the majority of Americans have accepted the nominalistic version of marriage and divorce.

If marriage is understood exclusively as a relationship, that and nothing more, then all the formal paperwork and ceremony associated with marriage are unnecessary. The so-called live-in marriage is now popular. And if the nominalistic concept of marriage is pressed even harder, any relationship between any two people is a valid form of marriage. Thus we have hom*osexual and lesbian marriages. Half a century ago the “back street arrangements” were kept as secret as possible, being immoral and scandalous. Nowadays, where nominalism rules, persons on television talk shows freely admit to live-in arrangements. Subconsciously they know that a population that has bought the nominalistic ethic will express no moral outrage.

Nominalism has a powerful effect on language. It takes the moral vocabulary of the past and destroys it. A young girl is no longer immoral, but sexually active. hom*osexual relationships are now termed sexual preferences. Deviant behavior is called an alternative lifestyle. Pederasty is defined as intergenerational sexuality. Drug abuse is now known as the recreational use of controlled substances.

Nominalism And Killing

The unusual anthropologist Ernest Becker has observed that the more scientific and technological a society becomes, the less value it puts on human life. I would rephrase this: the more nominalistic a society becomes, the less it values human life. When a human being is viewed as part of the System of systems (as, for instance, when we say that “no man is an island”), then murder is a terrible crime. It is the total elimination of a self, a person, a piece of humanity. But if there are only particulars, then each human being is one more particular, no more, no less. So to kill a human being is to eliminate but one more particular from about four billion. Some primitive (sic!) tribes have fought each other until one person was seriously wounded or killed, and then they have stopped. Nominalistic man of the twentieth century has carried on wars that have killed millions. And now, according to the latest speculation, a nuclear war could well kill two billion people, and the more remote aftereffects could kill the remaining two billion.

The geometric growth of the rate of abortions is another facet of nominalistic mentality. The notion that the circle of responsibility includes only the pregnant woman and her doctor is nominalistic. Of course, abortion can be justified in a number of situations because two lives are inextricably bound up in one fate, something not true of any other relationship. But under nominalistic assumptions, abortion has become a measure to avoid an inconvenience.

Nominalism And The Law

Another dire symptom of the triumph of nominalism is the proliferation of lawsuits and the enormous sums involved. If a person believes every other person is part of God’s great creation, and a participant in all the “creation orders,” as some theologians call them, then a relationship with another person has a sacred element to it. One can put no price on that relationship. The holy, the sacred, and the intimate carry no price tags. Under such assumptions a lawsuit is a rare thing, and the sums involved are modest.

Our nominalistic society, which has lost its vision of the sacred, now puts sums on human relationships and does not hesitate to create the serious moral rupture among the people such suits inevitably involve. Once human relationships can be reduced to sums, it is surprising who sues whom. There are cases of lesbian partners suing each other, of children suing parents, of parents suing school boards or educational systems. Live-ins sue live-ins, a rough calculation of one such suit putting the cash price of such a relationship at a thousand dollars a day. Nominalism does that sort of thing. It is no longer “Man is the measure of all things,” but “Money is the measure of all relationships.”

The enormous impact of nominalism on legal theory is also apparent. Formerly, when a jurist believed in some version of a world order (philosophical or theological), he also believed that human law reflected—imperfectly—the justice of the world order. In the Old Testament, the laws of Israel were understood to be derived from the justice of Yahweh. Therefore, there is something sacred or holy about a code of law, a court of law, and a policeman who enforces the law. There was something above and beyond the human personalities of these legal people, and they were given an extra measure of respect for that reason.

Nominalism puts the picture together differently. Legal systems are only human arrangements, human conveniences, in order that matters of business and common life may proceed with a minimum of obstruction. Laws are functional and pragmatic, enabling millions of people to live together in relative harmony. Hence, there is nothing extra to legal codes, courts of law, judges, or policemen. They are reduced to people paid to do certain tasks.

Son, Sixteen

Is this gift, this loan

of tiny rose-faced son

with silken hint of hair

and sobs that soothed away

in shoulder nestled sleep

so soon sixteen and six feet tall?

When did his child-wide chatter

change to rhetoric, expounding

man-voice deep? And hands,

a daisy-span, outgrow my clasp?

And timid toddling feet begin to march

to inner beat, determined dreams?

When did fearless questioning

replace the trust

that earlier lit his eyes?

While babe to child to man unfolds,

does love, mother-young turn

love, mother-wise?

I step aside

and ponder his mysterious growth.

And mine. And time.

So little time to nurture left.

So much for him to teach me yet.

So much more

to lean on Love to learn

—Vivian Stewart

The sickness that nominalism brings to our legal system may be seen in the way lawyers toy with the system. Some of the worst scoundrels may hire the cleverest of lawyers. The law, set up to establish justice in the land, is now used against it. Every conceivable ploy within the law is used to frustrate justice. A lawyer with the historic view of the relationship of justice to the legal system would never engage in the willful manipulation of the system. But a lawyer whose mind is governed by nominalistic assumptions will see nothing wrong with it. Such a lawyer is governed by money, or fame for winning his case, or some sordid combination of both.

Nominalism And Athletics

Another commentary on our nominalistic society is that of the enormous sums of money paid to professional athletes. Historically, certain criteria applied to athletic contests set them above the criteria of the market place. In such contests heroism, team play, physical dexterity, remarkable endurance, and the astonishing will to achieve were the gold coin of the realm and sufficient in themselves. But in a society governed by nominalistic assumptions, such virtues all become of secondary value. The same mentality that puts sums of money on personal relationships in lawsuits now places sums of money on the quality of athletic performances. And that performance is viewed by a crowd of spectators governed by similar nominalistic assumptions.

Nominalism And Catholic Authority

Nominalism means that the individual is the the ultimate point of reference for value, morality, or any other such decision. This spills directly over into theology, especially with reference to any authority granted to Scripture, tradition, or church.

A revelation of this mentality is to be found in Hans Küng’s book, Infallible? An Inquiry. Traditional Roman Catholic theology presents five infallible authorities: the pope, the ecumenical council, the universal consent of bishops, tradition, and Scripture.

In Küng’s books we see that the real issue concerns not the infallibility of these sources, but their authority. Nominalistic thinking has deeply penetrated the Roman Catholic church, and created a major crisis of obedience to authority. Hans Küng himself has refused to obey the orders given to him by the heirarchy of the church. It is now common knowledge that bishops, priests, and lay people disobey systematically and massively the authority of the church. The Roman Catholic church forbids all use of artificial methods of birth control, yet polls show that many millions of Roman Catholic laity use such methods. Such is the nominalistic erosion of authority in the Roman Catholic church.

Erosion Of Protestant Authority

The basic case is no different in Protestantism, where the nominalistic mentality also reigns. Historic creeds have only the authority a pastor wills subjectively to give them. Scripture fares no better. Its authority is exactly that of the subjective preferences of the theologian or pastor. The sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) of the Reformers is replaced by the subjective preferences of the individual conscience. Even those of us who maintain the historic sola Scriptura discover how deeply into our own bones the nominalistic cancer has penetrated. We too engage in a sorting-out practice on what binds us and what does not.

Of course, it is an oversimplification to hang all our modern woes, secular and religious, on nominalism. In any cultural development many factors are at work. Our argument is that the most influential factor is nominalism, and that it has done the most to undermine the concept of authority in both the secular and theological realms.

I do not deny the truth in nominalism that all authority requires an element of subjective recognition. The Reformers knew this and expressed it in their great doctrine of the internal, secret witness of the Holy Spirit. It is that persuasion of the Spirit that enables the sinner to admit the authority of Scripture. And nominalism has a point in requiring that any proposed authority give an account of itself (“legitimization”). Sheer, uncritical acceptance of authority is irresponsible.

Although T. S. Eliot is commonly known as a poet and dramatist, he was recognized in his day as one of the sharpest critics of culture in Europe (based on 19 years of editing the journal The Criterion). He believed that unless Europe and America kept a firm hold on basic Christian values and morality, our civilization would repeat the Dark Ages. That may be the case, if nominalism continues to rule.

Authority And Grace

From the Christian perspective, authority is always established in the context of grace. There is the amazing paradox of the sovereign authority of God accepted within the boundaries of the immeasurable grace of God revealed in the gospel. The Reformers saw an intimate connection among the grace of God, the gospel, justification by faith, regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the lordship of Christ, and Scripture. Sola Scriptura exists within the context of grace and gospel. And wherever the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ is preached, the authority of Scripture is established.

Whether Western culture will ever return to a healthier concept of authority is beyond our present knowledge. We do know that the more that nominalistic thinking prevails, the more ripped and frazzled will be our common life. But we can be assured that wherever the gospel is preached, those who receive it will seek to establish once again the authority of the Word of God in their lives—the sola Scriptura of the Reformers.

In this five-hundred anniversary year of Martin Luther’s birth (Luther was born on Nov. 10, 1483), the Reformer’s life and thought are being studied with more than usual intensity.

Luther’s theology is being tested, his lectures looked over, his correspondence combed, his personality probed.

But what of Luther the preacher?

Luther was a premier preacher. Estimates are that he delivered at least 4,000 sermons.

Some 2,300 of these have been preserved. Compared with the preaching of his medieval forerunners, Bernard of Clairvaux, Anthony, and even the great Savonarola, Luther’s preaching is distinctive in both content and style. E. C. Dargan in History of Preaching considered Luther’s preaching as “the best and principal work of his variously busy life.” Luther stands in the “first rank” as “one of the greatest preachers of all time.”

What can today’s preacher learn from Luther? Sixteenth-century Europe during the turbulent days of the Reformation is long centuries removed from contemporary America. Our situations and contexts are drastically different. Yet there are vital lessons Luther can offer for preaching. He is a model who can still instruct preachers of the Word who care as passionately as Luther did about the proclamation of the gospel.

God Speaks Through The Preacher

For Luther, preaching was a means of grace. Quite clearly, he saw God speaking in the preached Word. He said,

“Yes, I hear the sermon; but who is speaking? The minister? No, indeed! You do not hear the minister. True, the voice is his, but my God is speaking the Word that he preaches or speaks.” This meant for Luther that the power of the Word and the grace of God came through preaching, regardless of the human inadequacies of the preacher. “Though an ass were to do the speaking, as in the case of Balaam (Num. 22:28), it would nonetheless be God’s Word,” proclaimed Luther in one of his sermons.

Luther saw preaching as a means of grace God uses to give the Holy Spirit to those who hear the gospel. He said that the preaching of the gospel is “a means and a way and, as it were, a pipe, through which the Holy Spirit flows and comes into our hearts.” The Word proclaimed is the “vehicle of the Holy Spirit.”

Despite the fact that Luther had occasional bouts with depression about the preaching office, his theology of preaching as a means of grace impelled him to preach vigorously throughout his career. At the end of his sermons Luther believed the preacher, while aware of personal shortcomings, could nevertheless say, “Here God speaks, God himself has said it. I was an apostle of Jesus Christ in this sermon.” In the sermon, in other words, one encounters God himself.

Contemporary preachers could well recover this confidence in God’s use of preaching. It need not lead to idolatry, pernicious pride, or the “cult of personality” that glorifies the person of the preacher at the expense of the marvels of the message. A pastor’s confidence can often be renewed if he preaches believing that God can and will use his stammering words to convey himself. That conviction can call us to see the sermon as an event, a “happening” between God and people where something of tremendous significance can occur. Lives can be changed, perspectives can be altered, new visions of God’s call and work can break in, and people can be healed by the grace of God. To see preaching in this light will push us forward as preachers. It will beckon us to do our best in our preparation and proclamation. It will renew our hope in the tasks before us. To see preaching as a means of God’s grace as Luther did, can, if we let it, revolutionize our ministries!

The Content Is True Doctrine

For Luther the content of preaching is very plain. It is the good news of the gospel as known in Jesus Christ and expressed in Christian theology. Christian doctrine as the church understands it is to be boldly proclaimed. As Luther wrote, “The true doctrine is always to be preached publicly and constantly; it is never to be surrendered or kept secret, for it is the ‘rod of rectitude.’” Christian preaching is rooted in theological understanding.

The subject of Christian proclamation is the focus for both the preacher and the congregation. Both are directed beyond themselves to the One who is the source of the preaching itself. For “true preachers must carefully and faithfully teach only God’s Word and seek its honor and praise alone. In the same way the hearers must say, ‘We do not believe in our pastor; but he tells us of another Master, One named Christ. To him he directs us; what his lips say we shall heed. And we shall heed our pastor insofar as he directs us to this true Master and Teacher, the Son of God.’” In this way the church is nourished by the source of its life, Jesus Christ, as he is known in his gospel as the church understands and proclaims it.

The seriousness with which Luther took the preaching task is reinforced when Luther’s sermons are read as if they were preached on a battlefield.

Luther viewed the sermon as part of a cosmic warfare for peoples’ lives. The sermon was a kind of “apocalyptic event” that set a person’s life in motion—either in the direction of heaven or hell. No one can listen without being involved. “No one can listen in cool detachment,” said the Reformer.

The very form of Luther’s sermons indicate this fact. “When I make a sermon, I make an antithesis,” Luther said. Two sides confront each other. God and Satan struggle while the victory of Christ is being proclaimed. Luther stressed the antithesis between the God humans seek to know through human reason and speculation and the God who reveals himself in his Word, specifically in the Son of God, the man Jesus. Philosophy or human reason alone can never give us true knowledge of God. Luther strongly denounced the scholastic speculations of his time and referred to this reason apart from God as “the devil’s whor*.”

But in preaching Luther stressed that what was to be preached was “not philosophical subtleties … but the promise that makes trust possible.” God has revealed himself in the promises of the gospel found in Jesus Christ. In him “we learn to look straight into the face of God.” All other attempts to come to a knowledge of God are antithetically opposed to the Word of God. Whoever seeks God outside Jesus finds the devil instead. This false theology leads only to condemnation.

This is why true preaching must be rooted in theology and focused on the God who has shown his real self in his Son Jesus. People are called to faith in him. This is the crucial decision of their lives. It means life or death. And it is ultimately only this theologically sound preaching that will bring results. The spoken Word of the gospel is “not inefficacious; it bears fruit.” “The Word of the Lord does not return void but bears fruit, just as the rain waters the earth and makes it fruitful [Isa. 55:10–11],” said Luther.

The fruits of the gospel appear from preaching that has its roots deep in the soil of Jesus Christ and his gospel.

The church’s need for theologically sound preaching is constant. In the midst of multiple contenders for the affections and allegiances of millions, the gospel of Christ calls for a decided commitment of the self. Against all ideologies that put confidence in human resources alone stands the Christian’s theological affirmation: God has revealed himself in his Son, Jesus Christ. To proclaim this and all Christian doctrine with integrity is the continual challenge for today’s preacher. The question of Ezekiel was “Can these bones live?” (Ezek. 37:3). The question for us is, “Can these terms live?” Can we translate the theological legacies from our inherited Christian tradition into proclamation that speaks meaningfully for contemporary culture? Can our preaching powerfully address current issues—intellectual, social, and ethical—from perspectives that are grounded in the gospel of Christ? Luther’s own witness in preaching puts these issues before us. He challenges us to be theologically responsible in the preaching task.

Preaching Must Be Graphic And Concrete

It is well known that Luther spoke and wrote colorfully. This was his style. It was carried over quite naturally into his sermons and preaching. Yet Luther was also convinced of the importance of consciously making preaching graphic and concrete. In commenting on the apostle Paul’s use of picture language in Galatians, Luther said “the common people are captivated more readily by comparisons and examples than by difficult and subtle disputations. They would rather see a well-drawn picture than a well-written book.” Luther’s sermons are full of examples of his picturesque preaching language. Since not everyone dies completely stretched out, Luther referred to death as “old stretch your leg.” He called those who sought prosperity “knights of the belly.” If salvation could be attained only by working hard, Luther observed, then surely horses and asses would be in heaven! Just going to church will not insure heaven; dogs wander into church and go out again just the same as they came in—dogs!

For Luther, plain sermons are the best. A preacher must keep his audience in mind as he thinks about communication methods and images. “A sincere preacher must consider the young people, the servants and maids in the church, those who lack education.” As might be expected, Luther adjusted his language to the capacity of his audience.

In this area Luther followed the principle of accommodation, a principle the ancient rhetoricians stressed and great Christian preachers such as John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Calvin practiced. A preacher speaks to the level of his audience, accommodating his language so it is commensurate with the level of the hearers’ understanding. Luther said the preacher “must accommodate himself to [his hearers] as a nursing mother does to her infant. She prattles with the child and nurses it at her breast, since it needs no wine or malvasia. So preachers should also act; they should be simple in their sermons.” He added, “When we are in the pulpit, we should nurse people and give them milk to drink.… The lofty speculations and matters should be reserved for the wiseacres. I will not consider Drs. Pomeranus, Jonas, and Philipp while I am preaching; for they know what I am presenting better than I do. Nor do I preach to them, but to my little Hans and Elizabeth; these I consider.” For Luther the sermon was to be “childlike.”

Luther’s challenge is still with us. The preacher is constantly called to use his imagination to portray graphically the truths of the Christian faith. Jesus himself was the master of vivid communication. His sayings and parables potently presented the kingdom of God and other themes in language that captured the imagination of his hearers and invited their response. As contemporary parable studies have shown, Jesus’ parables were “language events,” open-ended and beckoning his audience to participation and involvement. To capture Jesus’ intention in his parables—to communicate vividly and imaginatively—could vitalize many a contemporary sermon! To adjust our language and images to the needs and natures of our congregations is basic. It is a goal we should always have before us. To communicate sensitively by learning how language works and then making it work for us in preaching is an important responsibility. As it was for Jesus and Luther, simplicity is still the key for us.

Yet to make things simple is often a complex task. Hard work and study is a must. Luther challenges every preacher to make the effort.

Preaching Is Christ Coming To Us

Preaching, for Luther, was the “spoken Word” of God. Through preaching, Jesus Christ presents salvation to the human race. For “the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or our being brought to him,” the Reformer said. Christ comes through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not work independently of the Word but Luther stressed the fact that Christ is the true object of our proclamation. “Nothing except Christ is to be preached,” he often said. His controversies with Roman Catholic theologians and such Reformed theologians as Zwingli and Calvin over the sacraments centered on the “real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. But for Luther, the “real presence” of Christ was also in the proclamation about him. In the preaching event the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is really present and active. The “entire Godhead will draw you and hold you” when you “hold to the Word with your heart,” Luther said in a sermon on John 6:47.

Since Jesus Christ is the center of Christian proclamation, Luther concluded that both preacher and sermon should be modeled after Christ. In the Incarnation the Son of God humbled himself. So, said Luther, as a preacher one should be humble and see one’s own self along with the congregation as a sinner for whom Christ died. The form of the sermon should model Christ too, in that it should show that “the reality of God to whom we should bow in faith is really very simple.” Some have noted that Luther’s own sermons became more and more simple as he moved toward the end of his life.

The evangelical thrust of Luther’s preaching is seen in his focus on Christ and his work on the cross, as well as in his insistence that the gospel demands a personal decision. In preaching, one is confronted with the living Jesus Christ who calls for faith in him. No one but the individual can believe. There is no alternative for personal commitment. As Luther said, “No one can ever believe for someone else as though his faith were a substitute for the entirely personal faith of the other.” For “a Christian is a person in his own right; he believes for himself and not on behalf of anyone else.”

This is why preaching, both in proclaiming and hearing, is so tremendously important. God speaks in preaching. Jesus Christ is conveyed. The Holy Spirit is at work. The promises of God are heard, faith is formed, and new life takes shape. The need for a continual hearing of the Word is strong—even for preachers themselves. As Luther said, “Since the preachers have the office, the name, and the honor of being God’s coworkers, no one should think that he is so learned or so holy that he may despise or miss the most insignificant sermon. This is especially true because he does not know at what time the hour will come in which God will do his work in him through the preachers.” We preach with excitement and expectancy, and we listen with excitement and expectancy, for Christ is present in our midst.

Contemporary preaching will produce interest and anticipation among us only if it is centered on Jesus Christ. He has been the focus of all genuinely Christian proclamation from New Testament days onward. The early Christian kerygma (preaching) was an announcement of God’s acts in Jesus Christ. Christ was the content of the proclamation. By the work of the triune God, Jesus Christ can be our contemporary. His Word can move us, and his Spirit can prompt us to new understandings and actions. We simply do not know where or when we may be arrested by his power or launched by his love into new areas of insight or involvement. This means the whole world is open before us. God’s call in Jesus Christ can lead us anywhere. His presence through the preached Word can bring new life. We speak and listen expectantly as Christ is conveyed in the preached Word.

Luther’s insights challenge us to care intensely about the proclamation of the gospel. We will take our task seriously if we believe God is speaking through us. We will see that our preaching is theologically grounded in the gospel. We will communicate as vividly as possible, using our best insights about language and style. And we will center our proclamation on Jesus Christ, who lives among us and calls us to continue to live lives of faith.

No two men have made a more indelible impact on the world we live in than Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, especially in changing our society from one whose values were primarily moral and spiritual to one whose values are primarily material and secular. The two men, as we will see, had much in common. Both died mired in hopelessness and despair, both bereft of religious faith. Hope and the Christian faith is my subject, but first let me detail the impact and the similarities of Marx and Freud.

Marx, the German philosopher, through his writings—especially his Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto—set the stage for the Russian revolution. This in turn led to the rise of Marxism and to Lenin and Stalin coming to power. Stalin in turn helped make it possible for Hitler to come into power. One can make a reasonably strong argument that without Marx we would not have had World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the endemic Middle East crisis, the arms race, or the world being divided today into Communist and non-Communist camps.

Freud, the Viennese physician whose scientific contributions some historians have ranked with those of Einstein, gave us a new understanding of the development and functioning of the human mind. His ideas have pervaded medicine, literature, anthropology, and many other disciplines.

In addition to their intellectual legacy, both Marx and Freud left a world view that has helped to erode our society’s moral and spiritual values. Both mounted a direct attack on religious faith, Marx calling religion the “opiate of the people” and Freud diagnosing it as “the universal obsessional neurosis.” Freud concluded that God was but a projection of the childish wish for an all-powerful father who would protect one from the harsh elements of nature. When a college freshman mentions God in a paper today, it is not unusual for him to find at the end of his paper a comment by an instructor asking, “Are you serious? Freud disproved God 50 years ago and showed religion to be a psychological crutch for the ignorant masses.”

It is interesting to ask if Freud’s philosophy of life stemmed from his scientific discoveries or from something more personal. Although he declared religious faith absurd, he spent the last 30 years of his life writing about it. He seemed to be obsessed with it. He mentions God frequently in his personal letters. “If someday we meet above,” “if God so wills,” “he is indeed a true servant of God,” “by God’s grace,” are a few of the phrases found in his letters. Freud, who insisted that even a slip of the tongue has deeper meaning, would be the last to dismiss these references to the Creator as merely “a manner of speaking.” Perhaps they reflect an unresolved ambivalence toward the Ultimate Authority. And although he observed that persons’ relationships with their fathers influenced their concept of God, Freud seemed to be unaware that his extremely negative attitude toward his own father may have been the basis for his extremely negative attitude toward God.

The number of parallels in the lives of Marx and Freud is striking. Here are a few:

• Both had devout fathers. When Marx was six years old, his father became a Christian and had all of his children baptized in the Protestant church. Marx’s father wrote his son in a letter when Karl was in college: “A good support for morality is a simple faith in God. Sooner or later a man has a real need of this faith; and there are moments in life when even the man who denies God is compelled against his will to pray to the Almighty.” He then encouraged Marx to embrace the faith of Newton and Locke. Freud’s father presented Freud on his thirty-fifth birthday with a Bible inscribed in Hebrew: “My dear son, it was in the seventh year of your age that the spirit of God began to move you to learning. I would say the spirit of God speaketh to you: ‘Read in my book; there will be opened to thee sources of knowledge of the intellect.’ It is the book of books; it is the well that wise men have digged and from which law givers have drawn the waters of their knowledge.”

• Both had conflicts with their fathers, with authority generally, and, of course, with the concept of an Ultimate Authority.

• Both wrote prolifically and suffered rejection because of their ideas.

• Both died bitter and disillusioned men, with little compassion for the common man. Freud wrote in 1918, “I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.”

• Both had virtually no friends. Biographers agree that Marx had few close friends, was coldly arrogant, conceited, and “full of hate.” Freud broke with each of his followers, none of whom he had been very close to anyway.

As we read of the end of their lives—of how Marx and Freud finished the course—we note the lack of inner peace and fulfillment, the overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness.

As despair and hopelessness characterized the last years of the lives of Marx and Freud, so do these same qualities characterize an increasing number of people in our society today—especially the young. The rapid rise in the suicide rate among adolescents may be but one reflection of this despair.

When a doctor sees a patient who expresses complete hopelessness, he thinks immediately of the clinical picture of depression. Depression may be mild, or it may be so intense that it paralyzes.

Mild or severe, depression affects more people in our culture than any other 6 emotional disorder. One feature of depression might also be considered a cause. What often appears to be the cause of despondency in many today is an awareness of a gap between what they think they ought to be and what they feel they are. That is, there is a discrepancy between the ideal the depressed hold for themselves and an acute awareness of how far they fall short of the ideal.

At Harvard University, the intellectual ability of the entering students has risen steadily year after year. Yet the dropout rate remains the same. About 25 percent of each class drops out over the four years, and about 40 percent of these have emotional conflicts severe enough to warrant psychiatric help. The most frequent diagnosis among these students who leave college is depression. The most frequent cause appears to be an awareness of a gap between the ideal self as a gifted brilliant student—as often they were in high school—and the actual self which, because of real or imaginary reasons, they see as a mediocre student in the highly competitive world of a modern university. This is but one example. All of us at some time suffer from the awareness of how far short we fall of what we ought to be.

Does the Christian faith offer resources to help with this conflict? The New Testament makes us acutely aware of an enormous gap between what God demands us to be and what we are. This realization, of course, leads not to despondency but to greater awareness of one’s need for Christ, for Christ bridges the gap. This bridging of the gap was precisely the reason for his presence on earth—to bridge the gap between God and alienated man, between what we are and the perfection God demands. Spiritual rebirth and redemption is based not on good works, “lest any man should boast,” but on what Christ has accomplished for us. The good works ought to be a result of the new birth, not the other way around. The Scriptures indicate clearly that God is interested not merely in good men, but first of all in new men, because man’s natural goodness always falls short. And this new birth does not make one less aware of how far short he falls of his ideals and of God’s standards; it makes him painfully more aware. But this awareness does not lead to self-hatred and despondency.

The Christian experience may provide a man with the motivation and the inner strength to take a step toward being what he knows he ought to be. He may stumble and fall while taking the first step or the next step, but when and if he does fall, he knows that there is always forgiveness and the opportunity and resources to start again. In this way the Christian experience helps one cope with the haunting awareness of the gap between what he ought to be and what he is. God’s forgiveness and acceptance make it easier for him to tolerate and accept himself—perhaps reason he can accept others.

A second element of depression, closely related to the first, is the feeling of worthlessness, of low self-esteem. Psychiatrists have long been aware that this feeling is a significant part of depression. As with all feelings experienced by an emotionally ill person, everyone experiences the feeling of worthlessness to a greater or lesser extent.

Deep-seated misgivings about our personal worth plague all of us. If we peer beneath the surface of the most egotistical, we find his conceit covers deeper fears of inadequacy and incompetence. College students with the highest academic performances sometimes harbor the constant deep-seated fear of not being intelligent. Some of the most intellectually gifted are haunted by the feeling that their acceptance in college is a fluke and that they have hoodwinked a great many people. (These feelings of inadequacy are also found in older adults who have been immensely successful.)

This lack of esteem, this lack of personal worth and confidence, harasses continuously. Some people are able to use these fears adaptively, to work excessively hard, and to achieve more than they would without the fears. But many others are incapacitated and discouraged, making even an effort difficult.

Whatever the cause of our feelings of worthlessness, the important question is how we handle them. Some are paralyzed by them—avoiding all activity that involves risk of failure lest they fail and confirm what they feel about themselves. Others work hard to disprove the feelings. And some handle feelings of worthlessness by projecting them. People have a tendency to see others, especially others who differ from them, as worthless or inferior. We do this unthinkingly. We tend to look down on people from other countries, people with less education or less money, or people with different skin color and different clothes. All of this is but a desperate attempt to deal with our own feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.

Does the Christian faith provide resources to help deal with feelings of worthlessness? Once again the starting point for the Christian is the full realization that in himself, as far as his relationship to God is concerned, he can do little to improve his worth. But this does not lead to despair, for he realizes that his worth is not in what he does, in what success he achieves. Scripture states that our worth is in what Christ has done for us. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.”

Another feature of depression is the feeling of hopelessness, the feeling that there is no way out, that things will only get worse, and that one is completely helpless. Some authorities consider the feeling of hopelessness and helplessness the one essential feature characterizing all types of depression.

The word “hope” is used and heard little in our culture. Perhaps hope conflicts with our concept of a scientific-world. Many books exist on faith and on love, but few on hope. Psychiatrist Karl Menninger writes, “The Encyclopedia Britannica has columns on love and faith, but not a single word about hope. In scientific circles there is a determined effort to exclude hope from conceptual thinking … because of a fear of corrupting objective judgment by wishful thinking. But all science is built on hope, so much so that science is for many moderns a substitute for religion … man can’t help hoping even if he is a scientist. He can only hope more accurately.”

Psychiatrists have long suspected that hope fosters health, both physical and emotional. An increasing body of medical evidence documents the deleterious effect that depression and hopelessness have on physical health. As long ago as 1905, Freud wrote: “Persistent affective states of a depressive nature, such as sorrow, worry, or grief, reduce the state of nourishment of the whole body, cause the hair to turn white, the fat to disappear, and the walls of the blood vessels to undergo morbid changes. There can be no doubt that the duration of life can be appreciably shortened by depressive affects.”

Lovingkindness 1 & 2

God’s strong arm

extends to selfish bullies, willful, crude;

endures the self-deceived; ignores the rude;

forbears with murder; incest does not quell.

And when my arm would sweep them all to hell,

His little finger draws them to his heart.

God’s strong arm

in love applies the rod, employs the lash;

impairs a face; in beauty strikes a gash;

denies the hungry; wounds a mother’s breast.

And while I raise my fist, beseech, protest,

His thumb imprints a poem with the pain.

—Beverly Butrin Fields

A noted physiologist, Harold G. Wolf, writes, “Hope, faith and a purpose in life, is medicinal. This is not merely a statement of belief but a conclusion proved by meticulously controlled scientific experiment.” He then mentions the differences in the death rate from tuberculosis among primitive people who are completely in despair and other people who had hope for relief, and also the number of prisoners of war who died for no apparent reason other than that they had given up hope. For years there have been clues that hopelessness often sets the groundwork for the development of organic disease. These clues have stimulated a number of recent experiments, documenting the deleterious effects of depression and hopelessness on health.

In an experiment carried out at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, 54 patients for open heart surgery were interviewed before surgery and following it. The significant finding was that 80 percent of the patients who died after surgery were depressed. They were the patients without hope. The impression that hope plays a significant role in determining morbidity and mortality is being documented by rigorously controlled scientific experiments.

But what is hope? It certainly is not the same as wishful thinking, for wishful thinking has few grounds on which to expect the wish to be fulfilled. Neither is hope identical with optimism, for optimism often implies a distance from reality. And according to Webster, hope is not the same as expectation. Webster defines expectation as implying a high degree of certainty—that is, a certainty based on being able to see what obviously is going to happen. As you recall, Paul says, “For in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all” (Rom. 8:24, NIV). Webster defines hope as belief that what is desired is attainable; hope involves trust and reliance. Menninger, reminiscent of Paul, defines hope as positive expectations that go beyond the visible facts.

If hope is defined as belief and trust and reliance, one cannot help but ask, “Belief in what? Trust in what?” One must have some basis, some reason for one’s hope. It must be rooted in some reality.

When we turn to the New Testament we read again and again: “Christ Jesus our hope.” The Christian’s hope is based on historical fact: the person of Christ and, above all, his resurrection. “In [God’s] great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3, NIV).

I have mentioned the resources that are available to the Christian to help him cope with the feelings of depression. My conviction that such resources exist is not based on emotional bias. Of course, as a Christian I would like such resources to exist. But I can say the conviction that they do exist is based on a critical assessment of evidence from my own observations and experiences. One can’t help but observe the very limited resources available to one with no faith and no hope. Both Marx and Freud ended their lives bitter and disillusioned men. Though their lives incurred a full share of hardship and adversity, they apparently lacked the spiritual resources to draw on to help them finish the course with any sense of hope.

In 1920, when Freud was 64, he lost through death a young and beautiful daughter. He wrote that he wondered when his time would come and he wished it would be soon. “I do not know what more there is to say,” he writes. “It is such a paralyzing event, which can stir no afterthoughts when one is not a believer.…”

Compare Freud and Marx with another scholar. An atheist until about 30 years of age, C. S. Lewis embraced the Christian faith after a great deal of intellectual struggle and used his gifts of keen intelligence and mastery of the language to write books that have influenced scores of people in a direction opposite to that of Marx and Freud.

C. S. Lewis wrote about his reactions to the loss of his wife—the one person who was to him everything worthwhile on this earth. The book (A Grief Observed) is a magnificant one for a psychiatrist to read because it expresses with remarkable clarity the process of mourning and grief. Lewis describes the anger, resentment, loneliness, and fear, the fluttering in the stomach and restlessness; how the world seemed dull and flat, how he could find no joy in his work. Could God in the final analysis be a cruel God? Was God a cosmic sad*st?

In the agony of his grief, Lewis tried to pray. Though his need was desperate, he sensed only a door slammed in his face and a sound of bolting and double bolting from the inside.

He felt God had forsaken him. A Christian friend reminded him of Christ’s cry in agony—“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me”—but it didn’t help. Lewis was aware only that God did not answer his prayers. There was only the locked door, the iron curtain, the vacuum, absolute zero. He soon realized that in his desperation he wasn’t knocking at the door; he was trying to kick it down. Then, slowly, gradually, like dawning of a clear spring day, with light and warmth of the sun, his faith began to bolster him, to give him renewed strength, comfort, and what he describes as “unspeakable joy.” He knocked, and this time the door was opened and he experienced again the presence of him upon whom his hope was based.

Lewis’s last letters, some written days before his death, indicated that he finished the course in striking contrast to Marx and Freud. He writes, “I was unexpectedly revived from a long coma, and perhaps the almost continuous prayers of my friends did it—it would have been a luxuriously easy passage, and one almost regrets having the door shut in one’s face. Ought one to honor Lazarus rather than Stephen as the protomartyr? To be brought back and have all one’s dying to do again was rather hard.”

“When you die, and if ‘prison visiting’ is allowed, come down and look me up in Purgatory.”

“It is all rather fun—solemn fun—isn’t it?”

Then, in his last letter, he writes to a woman friend, “Thanks for your note. Yes, Autumn is really the best part of the seasons; and I’m not sure that old age isn’t the best part of life. But, of course, like Autumn it doesn’t last.”

Hopelessness and despair? No. Fulfillment, peace, excitement, and even anticipation of what comes next? Definitely.

Does the Christian suffer less adversity and pain than others? There is much evidence that he suffers as much. Does he, however, have more resources to cope with the pain? There is a great deal of evidence that he has. By no means the least of these resources is hope.

The Scriptures again speak eloquently: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13, NIV).

Leighton Ford’s vision for world evangelization.¹This article is taken from an address prepared for delivery at the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam last summer. Leighton Ford is a veteran evangelist and associate of Billy Graham. Copyright 1983 by Leighton Ford; used by permission.

Late in the last century two French writers went to visit a famous scientist, Pierre Berthelot. The scientist predicted that in decades, mankind would develop awesome weapons of terrible power. “We are only beginning to lisp the alphabet of destruction,” he said, and he went on to express his fears that the human race might destroy itself. One of the writers spoke up. “I think,” he said, “that before that time comes God will come down, like a great gatekeeper, his keys dangling at his waist, and say, ‘Gentlemen, it’s closing time.’”

Now, in the 1980s, many people are wondering if we are getting close to closing time. There is a widespread feeling of hopelessness in the face of economic problems and international tensions. Ours is a world in which 10,000 people a week die of starvation. It is a world in which 40 different wars are now being fought, any one of which might flare up into an international conflict. It is a world in which main nations wrestling with poverty are threatened with totalitarian regimes. It is a world with terror on the horizon, in which our nuclear arsenals contain weapons with explosive power equal to one million of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. A teen-age girl in Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God speaks for many youth when she says to her father, “You have given us everything except tomorrow.”

For many, this is an hour when despair and hunger and darkness reign. But from the standpoint of the gospel, another reigns. Jesus ties together world evangelization and the climax of history. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.” says our Lord, “and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).

This prophecy of Jesus comes in a twofold context. First, he speaks of the instability of human history. Describing the “signs of the age.” he says that the whole period from his first coming to his second coming will be an age marked by wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, and persecution. Down to the time he returns there will be hostility to the gospel, and at the end of the age evil will actually intensify.

If these “signs of the age” were all we had to go by, then Christians, too, might give way to despair. But Jesus also speaks of “the signs of the end.” “The sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30).

So it is in the context of human instability, but also a great divine certainty, that Jesus says, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then the end will come.”

This is one of the most exciting statements in all the Word of God concerning the evangelist’s task. King Jesus tells us that his coming lies right over the path of world evangelization. We are in an age of great spiritual conflict. Satan, the god of this age, is at work. The false rulers of darkness do strut around the world. But in the middle of all this we are to believe and to proclaim: King Jesus reigns!

As we go forth to preach the reign of Jesus, we ought to go with three great convictions about the King. These are the convictions that Jesus has a great power, a great program, and a great promise.

Great Power

First consider that King Jesus has a great power. Not only does Jesus promise us that “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached,” but in the Great Commission of Matthew 28 he claims “all authority is given unto me in heaven and earth.”

To present Jesus either as Lord but not Savior, or as Savior but not Lord, is to misrepresent the gospel. “The true response of a person to Christ is a genuine repentance which involves recognizing Jesus as true King in God’s world and thus seeking to live under his authority,” wrote John Chapman.

It is important that the evangelist understand the gospel of the kingdom, the power of Jesus. The kingdom is God’s reign, in the person of his Son, to abolish his enemies and to bring the blessings of God to redeemed humanity.

Consider how King Jesus actually shows his power in Luke 7. At Capernaum, he heals the highly valued servant of a centurion. In Nain, he stops a funeral procession and raises to life the only son of a poor widow. At dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee, he says to a sinful woman. “Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:1–10. 11–17, 36–50). So Luke tells us Jesus traveled about “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:1). The “good” in the “good news” is that King Jesus has the power to overcome the great enemies of mankind: sickness, death, and sin.

As Paul tells us in several places, sin, death, and Satan have been “abolished” by Jesus (2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14–15; Rom. 6:6). “Abolish.” in this context, means to defeat. Satan is a defeated enemy. He is still at work, but his doom is sure. A decisive victory has been won. King Jesus began his reign at his first coming. He continues his reign through his church now, and he will complete his reign when he comes again.

But we also need to know what the gospel of the kingdom is not. It is not a kingdom without a cross. On Jesus’ last trip into Jerusalem, the crowds, even the disciples, were delirious with joy. They felt sure that the kingdom was coming in glory and power at that moment. But Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again” (NIV). The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them and they did not know what he was talking about (Luke 18:31–34). Likewise today, we have many popular ideas of Jesus: Jesus the great example or Jesus the revolutionary or Jesus the guru. Many causes want to identify his kingdom with theirs. But without Jesus’ death for our sins, he would not be Lord and King. We always have to ask: are we Christian soldiers “marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before”? There is no crusade or no kingdom without a cross.

Nor can we have a gospel of the kingdom without conversion. Also on that final trip to Jerusalem, Jesus called the children and said to his disciples, “Whoever will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter” (Luke 18:17). Then we have the story of the two rich men. The first is a rich young ruler who will not be like a child. He trusts in his riches and turns away from Jesus. The second is Zacchaeus, who becomes like a child, welcomes Jesus into his life and his house, and gives half his goods to the poor. Jesus says, “This day has salvation come to this house.” Ultimately we believe that the power of Jesus will bring a new social and political order. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15, NIV). We can expect the power of the kingdom to bring some profound and positive changes of peace, justice, and freedom in the structures of our world. We should pray and work to that end. But primary in Jesus’ program is the changing of men and women.

And who is the gospel of the kingdom for? The answer is clear. When John the Baptist asked Jesus whether he was the Messiah or if another was to come, Jesus’ answer was clear, “The blind receive sight and the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor” (Luke 7:22). Are these poor for whom King Jesus exercises his power the economically poor? Yes, and the presence of the King must be seen in the community of the King as Jesus’ people do works of mercy and seek justice on behalf of the poor of this world. But look again at the people Jesus helped in Luke 7: they were not only the economic poor. Each had a need only God could meet. The centurion’s servant was sick, the widow’s son was dead, the sinful woman was cast out of society. In the eyes of their peers these people had no claim on God. The centurion was just a Gentile, the widow only a female, the woman merely a sinner. They were outside the circle of privilege. So good news for the poor is a message of grace. King Jesus’ power is for those who have no claim on God, for the helpless, who are ready to receive salvation as a gift.

If we are going to be caught up into the Great Commission, we need to see the magnificent power of King Jesus. God, through Jesus Christ, plans to put this broken world back together. Mankind’s great enemies of sin, suffering, and death are defeated foes. God, through Jesus, is redeeming sinners and will change all creation. The good news is for all—all who know their need and seek the mercy of the king.

A missionary, working in Southeast Asia, was taken by a little group of guerillas. He had several weeks to discuss political revolution and Christ with the leader of the revolutionary band. At the end of his time the revolutionary leader said a significant thing: “I have become convinced that your message of Christ is a more powerful one than our message. But, nevertheless, we are going to win. Christ means something to you, but the revolution means everything to us.” Only when King Jesus begins to mean everything to us because he means everything to the world will we truly become world Christians.

A Great Program

The second conviction the evangelist should have as he preaches is that King Jesus has a great program. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations.” he affirms (Matt. 24:14). If the kingdom is the power of King Jesus, then the world is his goal. Evangelists are to be kingdom proclaimers with world horizons.

Matthew 24:14 is perhaps the most important verse in the whole Bible in helping us to know where history is headed. What is the meaning of our human story? The ancient civilizations and religions saw history as a kind of merry-go-round of endless cycles repeating themselves over and over. The secular humanist sees history as a moving staircase with humankind progressing onward and upward forever. The nihilist sees history as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there. The Marxist sees history as the zigzag lightning bolt of class conflict. But those who believe in King Jesus see history as an arrow shot toward a target. We look to that day when our King will return and God’s purpose will be reached. Meanwhile, we have been commissioned to carry out his program for the world.

The central theme of the Bible is God’s redemptive work in history. First, he chose a small, despised people. Israel. Then, “in the fullness of time.” God sent his Son. Now the purpose of God is centered in King Jesus’ new people—the church. Jews and Gentiles become one new body in Christ. For nearly 2,000 years, God’s program and purpose have been found in the evangelistic program of the church.

This is staggering. God has given to you and me, redeemed sinners, the responsibility of carrying out his purpose. Who are we? We are not great people in the eyes of the world. It is focusing on the UN or what happens in Washington, London, Paris, or Peking. Sometimes we get an inferiority complex. Why did God put this program in our hands? Why didn’t he use angels? Our mindset begins to be that of self-preservation. A survival theology replaces a search theology.

Then let this verse burn in our hearts: “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations and then will the end come.” God has not said this about any other group. The good news will be preached by the church in all the world. This is God’s program.

The Immensity Of The Task

We must not oversimplify here. God’s program does not imply that the whole world will be converted. No, the gospel will be preached as a testimony. Some will respond and some not. Nor should we suppose God’s program might be fulfilled merely by preaching one gospel sermon or producing one gospel tract in each language. Rather, Christ has commissioned us to preach to make disciples and to teach these new disciples to obey all he has commanded.

Still, Scripture says, “This gospel will be preached in the whole world.” Do we really believe this? There are still over two and one-half billion people in the world who have not heard it. If they could be reached at the rate of one million new people a day it would take six and one-half years to complete the task.

Think of Islam with its seven hundred million followers worldwide, now the third largest religion in Europe. Think of China with its billion-plus population. Think of the great world-class cities. Cairo, the largest African city, went from four to eight million people in the 1970s. Mexico City, the world’s largest city, has a growth rate of about a million a year. Or think of the mass of defections from Christianity that have taken place in Western Europe due to secularism; in Eastern Europe and Russia, due to Communism; and in America due to materialism. The challenge of the unfinished task is greater than ever.

It has also been estimated there are 10 to 30 thousand people groups yet unreached with the gospel. Time magazine, in a recent article, singled out the idea of reaching the world one people at a time as the most significant development in missionary strategy in the last decade.

Recently a thrilling story came to light of how one “people group” was reached. It is the story of the Cholanaikkans. In 1972, woodcutters working near the Mangeri Hills in India reported sighting a tribe of naked, fair-skinned people living in caves.

Curious newsmen took the woodcutters as guides and set out to investigate. As they approached the hill area they saw a group of men, women, and children, without clothing, sitting around an open fire. As they came closer to the caves, the Cholanaikkans ran and hid. Soon some of the stronger men began to come out of the caves. The newsmen became frightened, but moved closer and eventually began communicating by using sign language.

The Cholanaikkans were living in caves because they were afraid of wild elephants. They ate fruits, vegetables, and wild honey. They never bathed, cleaned their teeth, or shaved. When it was cold, they wrapped themselves in the bark of trees.

This same year preparation had already begun on an Unreached Peoples Directory for the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Because of the report written by the newsmen, the Cholanaikkans were “discovered” and listed along with thousands of other unreached people groups. As information from the directory began to spread, a group of concerned Christians living near the Cholanaikkans began to pray specifically for this unreached group. They realized the responsibility for reaching the Cholanaikkans rested with them, so they formed an organization called Tribal Missions.

The Cholanaikkans lived deep in the hills of the forest and it took the newly formed group a full day to reach them on foot. As they approached, the tribal group was again frightened by outsiders wearing clothes, and they ran to hide. The Christians then devised a strategy: they took off their shirts and trousers, leaving only their waists covered, then walked on.

After repeated visits, the believers began to win the confidence of the Cholanaikkans. They cleaned their wounds, gave baths to their children, applied ointment to diseased skin, and taught them to wear clothes. They brought them food and tablets for headaches. They knew they had to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of the Cholanaikkans.

The Cholanaikkan children began to attend a small school where they were taught stories and songs. Pictures were used to share the gospel story. A number of both adults and children began to understand and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.

By their third year of ministry, Tribal Missions was able to buy land and build a small place of worship and a medical center. The place of worship is the center of activity for the Cholanaikkan community. About 50 people attend the regular worship services and more than half are baptized believers. Most of the Cholanaikkans no longer live in caves. Their whole standard of living has been changed because a group of believers cared enough to reach out to a lost and hurting people.

If disciples are to be made of all nations, then it will take a tremendous new task force of all kinds of evangelists—mass evangelists, village evangelists, city evengelists, student evangelists, men and women evangelists, Western and Third World evangelists, full-time and lay evangelists, pastor and tent-maker evangelists, older and younger evangelists.

A Great Promise

And that will happen. The evangelists will come and the gospel will be preached. For King Jesus has not only a great power and a great program, but a great promise. This is the evangelist’s third great conviction.

The gospel will be preached, for Jesus says so. This sure promise of our King Jesus should be a mighty motive. “There can be no doubt,” writes Michael Green, “that the expectation of the imminent return of Christ gave a most powerful impetus to evangelism in the earliest days of the church.” He believes that “it is difficult to overestimate the importance of eschatology on the mission of the early Christians. They believed that the long-awaited kingdom of God … was already ushered in through the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.… They were conscious thereafter of living in the last chapter, so to speak, of the book of human history, however long or short that chapter might be.” King Jesus did not give to his disciples any dates. What he did was to promise them the Holy Spirit for world evangelization. Our sovereign God has mysteriously linked the completion of his kingdom to the completion of our task of evangelization. And he has promised his presence through the Holy Spirit to be with his disciples in this task until the end of the age (Matt. 28:19).

Peter tells us to look forward to the day of God and to “speed its coming” (2 Pet. 3:12). How can we speed his coming? Will he not come when he is ready? There was a saying among the rabbis that if all Israel would repent for one single day the Messiah would appear. Peter seems to say: God in his gracious mercy is delaying his coming until the good news is spread to the whole creation. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Pet. 3:9–10). So we are to present Christ, warning all that they will face him some day and that will bring them either great joy or terrible judgment.

There are several obstacles to evangelism. “The doors are closed,” says someone.

“But are not things to get worse and worse in the last days? Are we not to expect suffering and rejection rather than the triumph of the gospel?” objects another. Of course, Scripture teaches that evil will intensify. But Scripture also tells that in the last days God pours out his Spirit upon all flesh (Acts 2:17). The last days will be evil, but not totally evil. God has given us the gospel for the last days and a power to take that gospel into all the world for a testimony. “We are not rosy optimists,” wrote George Ladd, “expecting the gospel to conquer the world. Neither are we despairing pessimists who feel that our task is hopeless. We are realists, biblical realists, who recognize the terrible power of evil and yet who go forth on a mission of worldwide evangelization to win victories for God’s kingdom until Christ returns in glory to accomplish the last and greatest victory.”

When world evangelization is completed, “then will the end come,” Jesus promises. That leaves us with three ends to keep in mind. There are the ends of the world to which the gospel is to go. There is the end of history which will be consummated with the return of Christ. And there is the end of our lives. Are we willing to go all out to the end of our lives, until the ends of the world are reached, until the end comes and Christ returns?

Paul said to the Ephesian elders, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24). When the time came for him to be offered up, he wrote to Timothy, “I have finished the race” (2 Tim. 4:7).

Finishing The Race

When our oldest son Sandy was 14, he developed a very serious heart problem. The problem seemed to be corrected by surgery and he returned to the athletics he loved so much, particularly track and cross-country running. Once he was pulling ahead to a record-setting victory in the mile run with a 40-yard lead on the next runner. Then either his old heart problem came back or he developed a problem with his legs. He stumbled and fell. He picked himself up and stumbled forward a few more yards and fell again. Looking around, he saw the second-place runner closing in on him. Sandy rose to his hands and knees and crawled under the tape, across the finish line and fell there, having won his race. They took a picture of that dramatic finish and put it in our paper. When I saw it, I thought of Paul’s words, “I have finished the race.”

That same son of ours had an intense dedication in everything he did and he was especially dedicated to Christ. He wanted to be a minister of the gospel and he was a strong witness for Christ at his secular university. Then in November of 1981 his heart problem returned. Further surgery was required and after 12 long hours the doctors came to tell us that they could not get his heart started again.

We miss him terribly. There are many things we do not understand about why God would allow the death of a 21-year-old man with so much to give to Christ. And yet we know this, that God has used Sandy’s life and death as a witness to stir other young people both to come to Christ and to go for Christ.

Were 21 years enough? There is no answer to that question. How many would be enough: 31, 51, 81? The only answer is that every moment we have must be filled as full as it can be to the glory of God.

So, until the power of King Jesus is proclaimed to all the world, and until he returns in great glory and God finally says, “It’s closing time,” let us run the race that is set before us, “looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”