Whatever one’s view of biblical prophecy, it is clear that Scripture predicts that at “the time of the end” two world figures, two awesome powers, shall arise and clash in gigantic combat, and that one shall destroy the other.
The Apostle Paul spotlights this event in one of his letters: “And then shall be revealed that wicked man whom the Lord Jesus shall destroy with the breath of his mouth, and annihilate by the radiance of his coming. But the coming of that wicked man is the work of Satan” (2 Thess. 2:8, NEB). In this brief prophecy we confront two eschatological parousias: the coming of Antichrist, and the coming of Christ.
This first figure towers monstrously in the Bible prophecies. He is represented under different symbols and bears a number of ominous titles. He is called the Beast, the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, and Antichrist. His characteristics are delineated, his personality detailed and defined.
He is a self-willed ruler who makes himself a god, railing against the Most High, polluting God’s sanctuary with an abominable sacrilege. He is big-mouthed in blasphemy. He is a mighty deceiver. Paul might possibly be implying that he is the devil personified—“He is the Enemy … that wicked man is the work of Satan” (2 Thess. 2:9, NEB). John further identifies and characterizes him: “This is how we recognize the Spirit of God; every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit which does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is what we mean by Antichrist” (1 John 4:3, NEB).
Scripture spells out Antichrist’s operation and amazing success. Daniel foresees him as a “despicable creature, one who comes when men are off their guard and gains the kingdom by means of crafty promises; the opposing forces shall be swept before him.… As soon as anyone becomes his ally, he starts to outwit him, for he rises to power by the aid of a small party” (Dan. 11:21–23, Moffatt). He will be “defiant, a master of craft; he shall make monstrous claims and prosper in his policy, destroying his powerful foes” (Dan. 8:23, 24, Moffatt). “He shall vaunt himself against the Most High … and for three years and a half the saints shall be handed over to him” (Dan. 7:25, Moffatt). He rules over a world-empire with a threefold power—economic, political, and religious (Rev. 13).
Scripture observes the setting for Antichrist’s reign. Naturally he could ascend to global power only in an unchristian world. Antichrist must rise out of a spiritually ruined world. Emil Brunner has said, “Nowhere in the New Testament do we find any expectation that in the course of the centuries mankind will become Christian, so that the opposition between the world and the church will be overcome in historical time, but the contrary is true: the Christian community or church will be a minority to the end.… The apocalyptic visions are unanimous in depicting the end of time, the last phase of human history before the coming of Christ, as a time of uttermost tension between … Christ and the Devil” (The Scandal of Christianity, 1950, page 110).
Antichrist will emerge out of “the final rebellion against God” (2 Thess. 2:3, NEB). Not only will religious men be at war with God; to attain the pinnacle of power, Antichrist will need the help of religion. The Bible foresees him finding that help in the “false prophet” whose lamb’s horns indicate his messianic appearance, though he has a dragon’s tongue (Rev. 13:11).
The alliance of political and religious forces against Christ will unquestionably create the climate in which the “man of sin” will dominate human society. Only through a complete global totalitarianism could he command “the kings of the earth.” However, once he has attained this massive dynasty he will persecute even those religionists who helped him. “He rises in pride against every god, so called, every object of men’s worship, and takes his seat in the temple of God claiming to be a god himself” (2 Thess. 2:4, NEB).
He becomes a political chief who rules with almost unimaginable military authority, once he has reached his high seat. He is supported by “the kings of the earth, and their armies” (Rev. 13:7). “Who is able to make war against him?” the world cries (Rev. 13:4). He especially seeks the destruction of those who are Christ’s (Rev. 13:7).
Apparently the world will look in vain for any revolutionary movement to break the power of the Earth-emperor. He will stand beyond the reach of human revolt. Yet he will be overthrown. A sentence from Daniel portrays his downfall. “By a stroke of no human hand shall he be shattered” (Dan. 8:25, Moffatt). His destruction will come from a weaponry beyond his ken.
Hence, having looked at the parousia of the Antichrist, we come to the parousia of the Christ.
The evil insanity of Antichrist is disclosed in his marshaling of earthly armies against the Power confronting him. One turns away shuddering from the invitation issued to beasts and birds to attend the banquet made possible by dead field marshals and princes (Rev. 19). But after the earth-shaking thunder, after the crack-up of earth’s mightiest military and the overthrow of earth’s most vicious dictator, comes peace. After the deluge, the new world. After the terror, “the shouting of a huge crowd … like the waves of a hundred oceans crashing on the shore … like the mighty roll of great thunder, ‘Praise the Lord, for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns’ ” (Rev. 19:6, Living Prophecies).
Who errs more greatly than those who look askance at men who await the Lord’s parousia, as though such men peered into a hopeless, frightening future? Not one existential nihilist is in this waiting crowd! Theirs is the “blessed hope” that made their long-ago brothers cry, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” The night beats on their backs, for they face the dawn. They can afford to watch a world end, for theirs is a world that will never end. They are homebound, as men who have “a song in the night, when a sacred festival is held, and gladness of hearts, as when one sets out with a flute, to go to the mount of the Lord, to the rock of Israel” (Isa. 30:29, Smith-Goodspeed).
“You have heard that Antichrist shall come,” said John. And so he shall. That will be the ultimate tragedy of man’s sin. But so will Christ come, and that will be the ultimate triumph of God’s righteousness.
Finally, after the anguished ages, Christ’s every promise shall be fulfilled, his every order obeyed. And “the government shall be upon his shoulder.… Of the increase of his government, and of peace, there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it, in justice and in judgment, from henceforth, even forever” (Isa. 9:6, 7, Smith-Goodspeed).
The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia will take memories back thirty years, when the same small country became the victim of another aggressor. That aggressor’s emblem was the crooked cross. Britain and France stood by consenting, and Chamberlain’s infamous treaty with Hitler made a pretense of ensuring “peace in our time.” Whether military intervention then would have stopped the Nazis is questionable; now, in a nuclear age, it seems folly to confront the Soviet bloc with force. The inaction of Western democracy in 1938 did nothing to commend it to the Czechs, and was probably a major factor in their entering the Communist camp a decade later.
To regard last month’s events in isolation would be a mistake, for Soviet uneasiness about its satellites had been growing for some time. Yugoslavia broke with Stalin in 1948. Successive years saw trouble among the workers in East Germany, the crushing of a more serious revolt in Hungary, and the Albanian defection to Red China, with whom the rift has widened to such an extent that Peking condemned the latest invasion as a “shameless act.” During the past months Rumania has evinced an increasingly independent spirit, but it was Czechoslovakia that gave most concern. Its break from Moscow would have opened a corridor from free Europe into the Ukraine, probably the most restless of the Soviet republics. Moscow’s swift and brutal plugging of the gap would have outraged world opinion still more had Americans not been in Viet Nam. There is little doubt that the Communists considered this an important factor in timing, just as the British invasion of Suez twelve years ago encouraged Soviet suppression of the revolt in Hungary.
In the 228 days available to him since the overthrow of hard-liner Antonin Novotny, Alexander Dubcek seemed to be advocating everything that Stalinist Communism stood against: free speech, a free press, secret balloting, the right to emigrate and travel abroad, greater industrial independence, decentralization of government, questioning minds, the right to demonstrate. Under Dubcek, several bishops were reinstated in this land where 15 per cent of the 14.4 million population are practicing Roman Catholics. Forty other offending priests had their convictions set aside. Intending ordinands became so numerous that Bishop Frantisek Tomasek, apostolic administrator of Prague, planned to open a second seminary, and was optimistic that the Dubcek regime would grant permission for this. The bishop saw new signs of religious fervor. “We are no longer a silent church,” he said.
Another mistake, however, would be to think that Czechoslovakia was rapidly becoming a non-Communist state. It was regularly supplying arms to the North Vietnamese. Joseph Cardinal Beran, the 79-year-old Archbishop of Prague, long a prisoner of Novotny, is still in exile in Rome. About 1,500 priests are still consigned to secular employment. All priests must take the oath of loyalty to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The government will not return church property confiscated two decades ago.
Josef Hromádka, leader of the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference, had earlier claimed to see encouraging portents. Marxists were now acknowledging that a changed society does not produce changed men, he told the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee in Crete last year. He urged discussions between the 100-per-centers on each side. “Half-Marxists and half-Christians,” he explained, “don’t do much.” The erstwhile Princeton seminary professor has always held that believers should contribute actively to the development of socialism.
In any event Hromádka had long ago forfeited his right to speak for orthodox Christianity. At the WCC’s Amsterdam Assembly in 1948, he denied that Communism was either totalitarian or atheistic. “Its atheism,” he insisted, “is rather a practical reaction against the forces of the pre-socialist society than a positive philosophically essential tenet.” He suggested that it was in many ways “secularized Christian theology, often furiously anti-Church.” The vision of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin as Christians unawares is as intriguing and theologically confusing as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s expectation of meeting atheists in heaven. Both intrepretations would tend to rile a Party member. The Christian Peace Conference might even have been embarrassed by any new liberalism in Czechoslovakia that could have moderated its customary pro-Communist, anti-American pronouncements. At the CPC gathering in Prague four years ago, the largest foreign delegation was the British, and it was led by a Church of England priest, the Rev. Paul Oestreicher. Now a senior staff member of the British Council of Churches, Oestreicher attended this year’s WCC assembly at Uppsala as correspondent of the Morning Star, Britain’s official Communist daily. The 1964 Prague meeting looked upon Eastern criticism of the West as wholly justifiable, while Western criticism of Communism was regarded as a misuse of Christianity.
A measure of religious freedom in Czechoslovakia would make it difficult to retain strict controls on neighboring regimes fed for so long on atheistic propaganda. The Czechs were heading toward a middle position in this as in other areas. Said one of their diplomats just before the August invasion: “Good Catholics in Czechoslovakia are dead serious today when they pray for the welfare and victory of their Communist government.” Of that government’s officials, 70 per cent reportedly spent time in jail under Stalin and after. It is not surprising that the Soviets had no substantial fifth column in Czechoslovakia to ease the aggressors’ entry and settlement.
Clearly the Soviets cannot understand or tolerate any brand of socialism other than their own. To them, moderate socialism is a dangerous dilution. Those who disagree are classed as “evil-breathers”—that is, enemies of the Soviet Union. An editorial in Pravda on August 20 said: “Marxists-Leninists are not and can never be indifferent to the fate of socialist construction in other countries and the general cause of Socialism and Communism on earth.” There is logic here. Those who feel that the future belongs to Marx consider it a duty to sweep away anything that stands on their road to world domination on Marxist lines.
It is unthinkable to them that Communism has been tried and has failed. So the situation naturally demands that an imperialist threat be posited, and an invitation invented. That the Czechs had requested military aid was dismissed as “an inept and obvious fraud” by George W. Ball, United States representative to the United Nations. He called it a “document of treason invented and written by frightened men in Moscow, reacting to their own dark nightmares.” The threat-and-invitation formula had been useful in Hungary twelve years ago. All this reflects reversion to a hard line that must be a setback for liberal tendencies within the U. S. S. R. itself. The sun may be steadily sinking on Stalin’s empire, but the Marxist myth survives. Says Professor Zbigniew Brzekinski, a Columbia University expert on Soviet affairs: “This is a victory for Oriental Communism over Western Communism, which was always attracted by social democracy while Oriental Communism was attracted by despotism.”
Last month’s “pre-midnight sneak” violated the United Nations Charter and shocked world opinion. The mot juste came from an unlikely source when Walter Ulbricht described the invasion as “a shining example of socialist internationalism.” Even those who had supported the Soviet Union over Hungary in 1956, among them the French and Italian Communist parties and the Indian Government, joined the chorus of condemnation. A New York Times editorial suggested: “The United Nations could and should defy that illegal act of detention by inviting President Svoboda, Premier Cernik and Communist party chief Dubcek to come to the U. N. and state their nation’s case. This could be done as a procedural matter, exempt from the veto; the invitation so extended would immediately put Moscow to the test.”
But Russia was not alone on trial in this crisis. What of the World Council of Churches, which has spent an inordinate amount of time on condemnatory resolutions on American involvement in Viet Nam? Now if ever was the time to recall Dr. Eugene Carson Blake’s words at Crete. He said that if the WCC “acts timidly and by compromise rather than courageously and by principle,” many Christians would look elsewhere “for the dynamism and the faithfulness that the ecumenical movement requires.” The Central Committee at that Crete meeting had much to say about the violations of human rights in those nations that could be criticized with impunity. By a piece of colossal hypocrisy, however, and under coercion by Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens, it said nothing about the untried prisoners of the Greek junta. The rejoicing attendant upon Orthodox entry into the WCC in 1962 was evidently not to be jeopardized for the sake of 3,000 dissident Greeks.
How has the WCC reacted to the Czech situation? At Uppsala, with matters steadily deteriorating, it said nothing—just as it continued to say nothing about Greece. No outraged protest was conveyed from Uppsala to the Soviet Union via the Metropolitan Nikodim, a perennial and vociferous figure at these ecumenical occasions. In response to the fait accompli, a month after Uppsala, the director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs sent a message to the CCIA’s commissioners and national commissions. It begins promisingly: “The reported military action in Czechoslovakia … creates a tragic situation for the people of Czechoslovakia and constitutes a threat to world peace and good will.”
At last the nettle was going to be grasped! The Soviet bloc was to be censured, just as the United States, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Portugal had regularly been! But was it? “At this initial stage it may be helpful to remind ourselves of statements relevant to the present situation which the WCC has issued on previous occasions,” continued the director, Dr. O. Frederick Nolde. “I send these to you after consultation with the General Secretary of the WCC and CCIA colleagues.” There follow five quotations from previous WCC assemblies, dealing with such matters as human rights, religious liberty, and peace appeals. Then comes a sixth quotation, this time from Uppsala, which says: “We Christians who have often lived in hostility toward one another see how the nations in order to avoid wars of inconceivable dimensions seek the way to co-existence. This challenges us to creative ‘pro existence’ with the welfare of our neighbor in view.” Whatever this means, the Czechs in their present plight will find it as irrelevant to their condition as mere words addressed to the poor and needy (cf. James 2:16). Where was that contemporary “costly word” of which we have heard so much?
Days passed while the WCC claimed to be seeking advice from its membership, including the churches in Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, the Soviet Union—and Czechoslovakia. It seemed a bizarre, needless prelude to humanitarian protest. Meanwhile the Soviet Union made a tactical reversal of policy, and this got the hesitant ecumenists at least partially off the hook. They then issued a statement that said, inter alia: “We deplore the military intervention” by the Soviet Union and her allies. The tardy statement came, it was made clear, “not only because of the grave issues of peace, human liberty and dignity at stake, but also in response to a plea indirectly forwarded to us from one of our member Churches in Czechoslovakia.”
Although belated and weaker than many friends of freedom would like, it was, nonetheless, the clearest and most unambiguous criticism of the Soviet Union ever ventured by the World Council of Churches. Any lesser response would have reflected the decline and disintegration of more than international Communism!
In joining the concern for the Czech people, the WCC had after its fashion jettisoned timidity and compromise, and evinced a measure of that courageous and principled action for which Dr. Blake had pleaded last year in Crete. The WCC pronouncement admittedly has mystifying overtones that await further clarification; but if member churches behind the Iron Curtain recommended or even tolerated the protest, this may be hailed as an ecumenical gain, and could signal the dawning in Geneva of a new spirit in which deference to Communism has less place.
OUTREACH TO THE MASSES
“Everything dat’s fastened down is coming loose.” This line from Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures well describes our time of convulsive change and periodic chaos.
At such a time the Christian Church must arise and assert with power the Gospel of Christ. Often men more readily recognize their spiritual needs under troubling social conditions. With God’s help they can see more clearly the contrast between man’s bankrupt ideas and futile efforts and God’s truth and love. The Church should spur believers today to make an all-out effort to advance the Gospel.
What can they do? Pastor and laymen must not only intensify their efforts to proclaim Christ through witnessing and preaching but also determine to use the mass media more effectively. The Church has hardly tapped the potential of television for gospel proclamation. And though it has done much more with the printed word—with books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets—it has not even begun to exhaust the possibilities. In academic circles, political circles, community organizations, and many other forums, men committed to the biblical faith have the opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of that faith to human problems. The truth of God’s word must be felt at all levels of society as something pertaining not merely to “the religious realm” but to all of man’s life and aspirations.
In the past five years, publishers have discovered the public’s growing desire for religious books. Opportunities now abound for evangelical writers to publish good manuscripts. But a survey of the flood of religious books published during recent months shows that most of the well-written ones deviate from biblical theology and hold a low view of Scripture. Evangelicals need to seize the initiative to write first-rate Christian books on both the popular and the scholarly level. In the past generation, the books of C. S. Lewis and J. Gresham Machen did much to advance biblical Christianity. Today we need many more like these men to devote themselves to Christian writing—not only of books but also of newspaper and magazine articles, for both the secular and the religious press. A Christian who can articulate his viewpoint with clarity, style, and conviction will not lack for publishing outlets.
Television is the most effective means of penetrating closed doors and closed minds that the Church has ever had. But Christian groups must not be content with Sunday-morning “religious ghetto” programming. They must aim for prime time. The effectiveness of prime-time programming was seen in Billy Graham’s recent TV crusade series, which met with great success in reaching the unchurched. Christians in various communions should join together to coordinate the talent and provide the funds for major network programs.
A hopeful sign for evangelical advance in television as well as in motion pictures, literature, and other arts is the recently established “Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment.” This pan-denominational group, composed of such people as Metropolitan Opera basso Jerome Hines, television and motion picture producer Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., writer Elisabeth Elliot, and composer-conductor Ray Robinson, is exploring how the arts and mass media may be used more effectively for the cause of Christ. Its first national meeting will be held November 23 and 24 in Palm Springs, California.
If Christians will get off the dime and pledge their abilities and resources to the bold mission of Christian witness throughout the American culture, the results could be astounding. With the blessing of God, people throughout the country could be helped to see that the secret of life is to be found in the purpose of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
In person-to-person contacts, in the pulpit and classroom, in public debate and discussion, in the press and literature, in television, radio, motion pictures, and records, Christians can and must confront our generation with the Christian message. If we fail, the world will never find the only solution to its desperate need.
