Readers will find stapled into this issue a removable bonus booklet introducing our new quarterly series on “Fundamentals of the Faith.” These 9,000-word essays will expound the great Christian doctrines.
Since no man in our times has proclaimed the need of the new birth to more persons than has Billy Graham, it is highly appropriate that the evangelist contribute the essay on this theme.
The series was first scheduled to begin in December, with Professor Gordon H. Clark’s essay on “Revealed Religion” (still scheduled at year-end). But Dr. Graham prepared his essay on the new birth also for his book World Aflame. The material therefore appears in this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY concurrently with Doubleday’s publication of Graham’s new book.
If one feature distinguished the early Christians, it was not their race, nationality, or sex. Rather, as the church historian Adolf von Harnack once noted, they considered themselves “a third race.” They never escaped the force of Jesus’ words: “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7). The dire necessity of the new birth remains a central emphasis of evangelical Christianity.
