Ideas

Twenty-Five Years Later: Billy’s Continuing Crusade

“We are having by far the largest evangelistic campaign of our entire ministry,” wrote Billy Graham of the Los Angeles meetings that began late in September, 1949. Scheduled for three weeks, they were extended to eight, and on the final day 9,000 people crowded into the big tent. Fourteen years later the same city’s Coliseum, filled with more than 134,000 persons, could not hold the additional 20,000 who wanted to hear the evangelist.

That earlier occasion might be considered the beginning of a ministry that has since spanned the world. On this twenty-fifth anniversary CHRISTIANITY TODAY with great thankfulness to God joins in saluting not only an evangelist whose place in history is assured but a much-loved friend.

God uses men and women. Scripture and later history both attest to this. To the dramatic record of the faithful in Hebrews 11 can be added a vast array of successors of those who in their own generation “obtained a good report.”

Billy Graham has preached to more people than any other man in Christian history, in part because of the rise of the mass media and an ever-increasing world population. It is impossible to know how many people have been reached and converted by his “Hour of Decision” radio broadcasts, his telecasts, his syndicated newspaper column, his films, his books, and his crusades in every continent. From being a socially indecorous subject evangelism became front-page news. His initiatory and creative genius led to the founding of two major magazines (including this one) and World Wide Pictures, and he has been the moving spirit behind international and regional congresses on evangelism. Time magazine has described him as “the best-known, most talked about Christian leader in the world today, barring the Pope,” and he has figured second in Gallup poll surveys to find “the most admired man in the world.”

He found this rise to fame bewildering. “Why did God choose you?” asked a reporter once. “When I get to heaven,” replied the evangelist, “that’s the first question I’m going to ask Him.” That winsome personality and patent sincerity have opened doors into the presence of kings and presidents, and allowed him to say with a holy boldness what others dared not say. He has made evangelistic tools out of humor, folksy illustration, and comment on current affairs. His appeal to youth has a timeless quality.

Graham has never been afraid to admit mistakes, and has always learned from them. His openness and graciousness have sometimes been exploited by opportunistic men to serve their own ends, and he found reason feelingly to echo Woodrow Wilson’s words, “The devil is a busy man.” Graham has not lacked critics in the church and in the world, but has approached them in such an irenic spirit that many have become his friends. This has been true not least in his own evangelical constituency, where a minority, resenting Graham’s unifying tendencies, has criticized the company he keeps. His philosophy, like Moody’s, has always been clearcut here: if no restriction is placed upon his message he is willing to preach the doctrines of historic Christianity anywhere.

As a young evangelist he soon learned circumspection. “I was afraid,” he would confess, “that I was going to say something that would bring disrepute on the name of Christ.” He shares that vulnerability of all public figures, the knowledge that every word is going to be analyzed, every gesture noted.

Billy Graham’s humility is seen at once by all who encounter him. He firmly disowns credit for his success. “It is the Lord’s doing,” he quotes, “and it is marvelous in our eyes.” His ministry is a living testimony of what the Holy Spirit does through a totally yielded life. He never feels free to criticize fellow laborers, and his many schools of evangelism have met a real need by encouraging and ministering to ministers. For those who have blazed the trail before him he shows marked deference. During an African itinerary in 1960 he said: “I am not worthy to polish the shoes of missionary heroes like Livingstone and Mary Slessor of Calabar. I am deeply moved and grateful for the privilege of reaping where they sowed.”

Even before the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling on desegregation Graham had publicly attacked Jim Crow laws, advocated integrated meetings (the first of these were held as early as 1952), and insisted that at the invitation blacks and whites should come forward together. He does not minimize the problems that stem from man’s inhumanity to man. “The only real solution,” he declares, “will be found at the foot of the cross where we come together in brotherly love.” His message stresses personal redemption and a rightly motivated, biblically based social concern.

That basic message has never changed, whether spoken at a banquet for Japanese businessmen, a chat with African witchdoctors, an open-air meeting in Communist Yugoslavia, or a Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

No appraisal of Billy’s Graham’s ministry would be complete without note of the part played by Ruth, the missionary’s daughter who has been his wife since 1943. His long and frequent absences from home demand from his family a special kind of dedication and understanding, and his wife’s sacrificial spirit and warm support and assistance have played no small part in enabling Graham to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

We call attention to the contribution made by his team members and their families, especially, perhaps, by those who have in some sense subordinated their own independent aims and have seen it as their ministry to assist the evangelist. One foreign journalist who traveled widely with the team was deeply impressed because never once even in the most informal conversation among team members did he hear the slightest criticism of Graham.

During these twenty-five years great things have been done through the ministry of Billy Graham. We honor him, we pray God’s blessing on his continuing endeavors, and we join him in directing the praise where it belongs: To God be the glory.

Labor And The ‘Grace To Use It’

John Milton carried the burden of time. God, he believed, had called him to be a “poet-priest,” to create great verse for his Creator’s glory. And he worked with dedication and discipline toward that goal. Yet despite his vision, at twenty-three he said, “My hasting days fly on with full career,/But my late spring no bud or blossom show’th.” Time for him was “the subtle thief of youth.”

As we move past Labor Day—the day on which we honor labor by ceasing from it—perhaps we may also find in ourselves no bud or blossom from spring’s showers and summer’s sun. We may have frustrated God’s gardening in us and failed to yield the fruit he wanted. Now that the vacation season has ended, perhaps we should pledge, in Milton’s words, to do with perseverance whatever tasks God gives:

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;

All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.

Hearkening To Harkness

Georgia Elma Harkness, eminent theologian, author, educator, and ordained Methodist minister, died last month at the age of eighty-three at her home in Claremont, California. Among her many achievements was a successful campaign to give female ministers in the United Methodist Church equal status with their male counterparts. Her struggle began at the 1948 General Convention and ended in 1956, though at that convention she did not argue the case but allowed her male colleagues to finish what she had begun eight years earlier. Before women’s liberation became a popular bandwagon, Dr. Harkness was quietly and single-mindedly following the path that she knew God wanted her to travel.

Other women, however, do not have this calm spirit of self-assurance. The evangelical camp has no prominent women theologians, perhaps because conservative seminaries and colleges traditionally have discouraged women from studying for the theology degree, while encouraging them to study Christian education. Such schools also have had very few women on their governing boards.

A random survey of college and seminary catalogues of both nondenominational and denominational schools show a dismaying paucity of female board members. Wheaton College, the most prominent evangelical liberal arts college, has no women on its board, nor do Barrington and Calvin. Westmont and Gordon sport one each. Columbia Bible College has two, as does St. Olaf, an American Lutheran college. Garrett Seminary and the Pacific School of Religion, two schools at which Georgia Harkness taught, have, respectively, three and six women on their boards. CHRISTIANITY TODAY does not have a female board member but intends to change that situation.

Evangelicals need to encourage women to enter the field of theology. If they do not, they may expect to lose some promising women to less than evangelical schools and circles. Also, we urge Christian institutions to appoint women to administrative and decision-making positions. Women have long accomplished much on mission fields around the world. It is high time for schools here at home to make use of that same creative energy.

Amnesty, Reconciliation, And Healing

One of Gerald R. Ford’s first acts as President of the United States was to call for “leniency” for war resisters, both draft evaders and deserters. Although the details of his proposal have yet to be worked out, two major aspects are already evident: first, it will not involve “unconditional blanket amnesty,” and second, it will deliberately seek to temper justice with mercy.

As we stated previously, we think that the first war resisters to benefit from a policy of leniency should be those who fairly and honestly stood by their convictions and who chose to go to jail rather than fight in violation of conscience. These persons should unquestionably have all civil liabilities—i.e., a criminal record—removed. This should be done before consideration is given to the fate of those who went into exile or hiding rather than expose themselves to the action of the law.

There can be no doubt that refusal of many to serve during the Viet Nam war was due to the constitutionally, morally, and militarily doubtful justification of that war. However, if the right of a state to maintain armed forces and to use them in an attempt to secure its own defense and other national interests is accepted—in other words, if we do not adopt the principle of pacifism—and if the government has the legal right to compel its citizens to perform military service, then refusing to serve does constitute a violation of law and must necessarily carry a penalty. Merely to forget about such evasion or desertion, now that America is no longer involved in the direct military conflict, would be to break faith with those in the past who did serve, suffer, and die. It might also limit future defense options.

We believe that the American government should recognize that refusal to serve was often motivated by high moral considerations, especially in the light of the ambiguous nature of the recent war. To the extent that the resisters accept the responsibility (we do not use the word guilt) for their actions and show a willingness to meet reasonable conditions of alternate service that may be required as a condition of repatriation, they should be invited home and guaranteed immunity from further consequences. Amnesty in the sense of unconditionally “forgetting” all that has happened would not be just, for no individual’s conscience can set the standard for society as a whole. But amnesty in the sense of putting the past behind us, with recognition of responsibility and constructive gestures on both sides, can lead to reconciliation and healing.

Korea: Hastening the Day

Despite political uncertainties, the tides of the Gospel are running high in South Korea. Last year in Seoul Billy Graham addressed the largest evangelistic gathering in the history of the Church (see June 22, 1973, issue, page 33). In August, Korea Campus Crusade for Christ hosted Explo ’74 in Seoul (see News, page 75), and again there were record crowds (see photo). The some 300,000 Explo registrants who were trained to share their faith represent a potentially potent force for national—and possibly world—evangelization. Equally significant is a by-product of the months of preparation for the Graham and Explo events: a new spirit of unity among the churches, which had been badly divided over the past few decades. With some of the largest and most dynamic churches in the world already in Korea, where all-night and daily dawn prayer meetings are the rule, the more fully committed membership and the broader united front cannot but hasten the day when all Koreans will know of the saving power and lordship of Christ. Let the churches of other lands take note.

Where Is Tomorrow’S Food?

Millions of the world’s people will die of starvation in the next few years. This is the chilling message that came from the United Nations World Population Conference at Bucharest a short while ago. Another estimate, one more open to question, is that in thirty-five years the earth’s population will double to eight billion. If millions starve to death, it may well be that the population growth rate will slow. But even if the population remains stable, there will be no substantial improvement in the situation unless food supplies increase.

The Western industrial nations are not increasing in population to any serious degree. But they too will face a complex problem when their older inhabitants far outnumber the younger people who must provide for them.

The underdeveloped nations, those least able to provide for more people, are the ones that are growing the most rapidly. However, many of these nations resist population control, viewing it as an imperialist attempt to dominate the have-not nations. There is little evidence that the nations of the world generally are thinking in terms of world unity and human solidarity.

The rigid stance of the Roman Catholic Church against birth control and abortion (we too are opposed to abortion on demand) complicates the problem. One commentator asserts that it is better to kill fetuses than to watch children and their elders starve to death. We think it is far better to prevent unwanted conception and then make every effort to provide food for people who need it. But it is difficult to convince nations that have surplus food to feed the starving if at the same time the receiving nations increase their numbers and further strain the supplies of food.

In a technocratic society in which billions of dollars are being spent on research, it may be that vast amounts of time, energy, and money should be invested in the effort to increase the production of known foods and find new forms of food. Are we forced to conclude that research on extending life should be decreased markedly, if extending life will only cause more suffering?

We seem to be at an impasse; doubts are rising rapidly as to whether there is any solution. A world-wide economic debacle seems to be approaching fast. Given the indisputable fact that men have brought this into being, anyone who does not believe in original sin or who still expects a man-made utopia is called upon to do some fast talking.

Truly this is an apocalyptic era, and one that suggests to many that history may be coming to its climax. This will be marked by the return of Jesus Christ, who alone has a solution for the mess into which man has got himself.

Choose Able Men

When Moses led the children of Israel out of their Egyptian captivity, his father-in-law Jethro gave him some sage advice: “You shall teach them the statutes and the decisions, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do” (Exod. 18:20). This counsel is most appropriate for the new American president, who is faced with the challenge of leading a people bewildered by the complexity, secrecy, and sometimes actual deceitfulness of the “statutes and decisions” imposed on them by government.

Jethro continued, “Moreover, choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and who hate a bribe; and place such men over the people … so it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you” (vv. 21, 22). President Ford, known as a man of strong spiritual convictions and deep personal integrity, must not pass up the opportunity to appoint as his colleagues and co-workers men and women who meet these essential criteria: they must be trustworthy (men of truth, as the King James version translates it), hate bribes, and above all fear God. Let the new president surround himself with men and women who are spiritually grounded, whose faith in God is a vital part of their lives, not just a cloak they don on opportune occasions.

‘Who Is My Enemy?’

The first five years of the World Council of Churches’ Programme to Combat Racism are assessed in A Small Beginning, published by the WCC. The author, Elisabeth Adler, who is head of the Evangelical Academy in East Berlin, bases her analysis not on the controversy aroused by the program but on such questions as, “Has it witnessed to Christ as Lord of all?” and “What did it mean for the racially oppressed?” These are legitimate points; we should all be concerned for the Church’s testimony and for our suffering fellow men. The WCC’s humanitarian agencies have done magnificent work, and many people have reason to thank God for aid selflessly given.

The PCR, however, raises special problems, and criticism of it cannot be dismissed as support for apartheid. Many Christians have serious reservations about encouraging violence and strong convictions about what constitutes the Just War. Moreover, Christian stewardship demands that we know how our gifts are being spent; it simply will not do for Ms. Adler to say: “That the grants were given without control expressed the desire of the World Council not to take the usual paternalistic approach.”

When she lets fly at “the ugly face of neo-colonialist, imperialist and racist structures,” no reference is intended to the racist and enslaving policies of the Russian Empire. When she lists the fifty-five groups that have benefited to the extent of more than a million dollars from the PCR Special Fund, one looks in vain for any Iron Curtain recipient—or donor. However this is explained, for the WCC to concentrate 85 per cent of the budget on Southern Africa and the Americas shows at the very least a startling failure to realize that the race problem is worldwide, and should be treated as such.

Christian Books: Buyer, Meet Seller

In the past quarter-century the number and quality of Christian bookstores has increased dramatically, as has their level of professionalism and business management. Much of this progress is due to the efforts of the Christian Booksellers Association, and we congratulate the CBA on its twenty-fifth anniversary (see News, August 30 issue, page 39).

One commendable trend is the locating of stores in shopping centers with ample parking, rather than in hard-to-get-to commercial districts. The Logos chain of franchised stores adjacent to university campuses, under the auspices of InterVarsity, is an important step toward reaching college students, both Christian and non-Christian. In another venture into new territory, racks of best-selling religious paperbacks are being placed in motels, liquor stores, hospitals, restaurants, and other places where non-Christians and persons who usually do not read books are likely to encounter them.

The buying public needs to be more realistic about costs in the book business. Manufacture of the book is only a small part of the publisher’s cost. Booksellers receive large discounts off the list price when they purchase their stock, but they need that margin to maintain a good store with a competent staff. Mail-order houses can pass along some of the discount because their overhead is low. However, the mail-buyer often has to forgo fast delivery—sometimes he may experience no delivery—and can find himself in billing hassles.

Pastors, youth leaders, Sunday-school teachers, and other Christian workers need to do more from the pulpit, in small groups, and in personal conversations to promote good reading. Bible colleges and seminaries could do more to prepare ministers for this function. Too often Christians read religious books that are urged on them by those with special causes or that are heavily promoted by the publisher, rather than the books that would be the most helpful to them as individual Christians and church members.

The increased professionalism among Christian booksellers should be continued and extended. The sellers would do well to be more imaginative and aggressive in promoting the buying and reading of books, and one way would be closer attention to local congregations. They might, for instance, offer assistance in starting or improving church libraries. Instead of complaining about nationally oriented discount mail-order houses, booksellers could make more use of the mails in their own market area and offer better service than a national operation can give.

We encourage publishers to consider even more not only the monetary but also the spiritual profitability of potential books. Some publishers do very well in offering a balanced fare of light-, middle-, and heavy-weight books. The “heavies” won’t be best-sellers, but they are greatly needed by those who must lead the Church in a world where it faces intellectual and religious challenges on every hand.

When a topic suddenly becomes popular, publishers tend to rush into the market with hastily produced new books or non-updated reprints from a different age. A national magazine recently counted more than thirty newly released titles on Satan and the occult, and its list was incomplete. Books on the second coming and on speaking in tongues are also in vogue. Many of these books are basically the same in content. Meanwhile, large areas of Christian doctrine and experience remain neglected (how many books are there on business ethics, or on facing the pressures of materialism?). We urge authors and publishers to ask, Does this projected book have something to say that isn’t being said just about as well in some already published book?

Christian bookselling has come a long way in the twenty-five years since its trade association was founded. May it continue to expand and improve its important role in the service of God.

‘The Same Care For One Another’

Christians are, in the sight of God, as firmly united as the parts of a person’s body. “All the members of the body, though many, are one body.… By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:12, 13).

Of course a human body, except in case of certain illnesses or injuries, works in harmony with itself naturally, without exhortation. The body of Christ ought to manifest similar cooperation, but it needs constant exhortation to do so. It is important to recognize that believers are one body whether or not they admit it, or like it, and even if they act to the contrary. Paul says, “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body” (v. 15).

For a Christian to speak of fellow believers as if they were detached or removed from him—a “we” versus “they” attitude—ought to seem as ludicrous as if one’s foot were to consider itself independent of the heart that pumps blood to it. When some Christians appropriate to themselves alone descriptions that are more or less true of all (such as “charismatic,” “confessional,” “holiness,” or “fundamental”), they reveal a “many bodies of Christ” attitude. Another symptom of this attitude is the use of derisive terms and tones of voice to describe one’s fellow believers (such as “holy roller,” “neo-evangelical,” “hyper-literalist”).

In First Corinthians 12 Paul is referring to differing spiritual gifts, such as those of prophets, teachers, miracle-workers, and administrators (v. 28). Nevertheless, the underlying principle can be extended to denominational, doctrinal, and ethnic distinctions within the body of Christ: “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’ ” (v. 21). What cannot be done in a physical body ought not to be done in the body of Christ.

Paul clearly distinguishes (as in the latter half of chapter 1) between those who are in the body of Christ and those who are not. And even when speaking of his fellow believers he does not intend that his concern for the one body preclude loving rebuke of one another. He is concerned to correct misbehavior (as in chapter 6) and to refute wrong teaching (as in chapter 15).

When rebuke and correction are demanded, they are to be given within the framework of a conscious and continuous recognition of our interdependence, without giving any impressions contradictory to the truth that we are “all baptized into one body” (v. 13) and to God’s intention “That the members may have the same care for one another” (v. 25).

Theology

Safe Storage or Sure Loss

News magazines and newspapers scream at us with scary headlines predicting world-wide depression. Anxious scrutinizers of the stock reports find a decline in value. The tiny box telling the exchange value of our money shows a drop that makes the money for travel worth only a fraction of what it was. Price tags on such things as rice, margarine, and dried beans seem like a bad joke as one puts the new package on the shelf beside the nearly empty one purchased a few weeks before.

Have you ever had moths get into the drawer containing your best sweaters, so that when you pulled out your lovely, soft cashmere, knitted in your favorite pattern, what you found was a rag of lacy, ugly holes? Have you had what looked like strong wood in your house wall turn out to be only soft, wet pulp because of years of leaks from rusty pipes? Or have you come upon the telltale line of sawdust left at the edge of a wall as termites ate their way through to hollow out beams?

What is safe? How can we feel secure?

As we look into the Bible, which is our source for practical knowledge of what to do day by day and how to live according to God’s specific advice, we are hit by the truth of how well God knows us, as well as by the definiteness of his commands. We can’t one day say, “Why didn’t you tell us?” He has told us clearly, but we are often blind and deaf. Or we let words flow over us like rain; we feel the fresh, cooling water, put our tongues out to catch a few drops, and then get a towel to rub dry, freeing ourselves of any effects. Words, words, words, like drops of water, or music, pleasant but temporary in effect. The Word of God is not meant to be like that. If it is not sharper than a two-edged sword, cutting us deep, then we have not really listened or seen.

Look, listen: Proverbs 23:4, 5—“Labor not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” What a description of today! How up to date the warning. The stock that suddenly “is not” because it has dropped to half the former value. The bank account that suddenly “is not” because taxes have diminished it or the exchange rate has dropped. The rise in prices that causes the money in one’s bag to be “not” because it can pay for only half of what one expected to buy. Day by day people are clutching with their eyes and with their hands that which “is not,” which is suddenly going to turn into ashes in the midst of the clutch. “Riches make themselves wings”—what an apt description. Picture stocks and bonds and bank accounts suddenly rising like a flock of birds.

God has warned his people for centuries. He has meant his people to be aware of the trap of spending time like a crazed spendthrift, a drunken sailor. People who pride themselves on being prudent and wise about money often spend the precious commodity of time figuring out how to clip the wings of their riches, to keep them from flying away. But they are going to fail, God warns. Riches certainly will make themselves wings!

What then are we supposed to do in order to “cease from thine own wisdom” in this area?

Come to the man in Luke to whom God said, as he was drawing up blueprints of safe storehouses for his riches, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” Jesus does not leave his disciples or us pondering what on earth he means when he says this. He goes on to be very explicit about what it means to be “rich toward God.” Turn to Luke and read on. Read chapter 12:15–34, and think about it as if you had never seen it before. Think about it in relation to the stock-market report and the tax bill. What are we to worry about?

We are to take no time to worry about tomorrow’s prices, what we are going to eat, or put on our bodies. We have been given the birds to think about. Look out the window, go into the woods, watch the birds as they fly. They eat, they have glossy wings; God has provided for them. We are to measure ourselves and think for a while about how we can’t be taller by trying to plan it, and that should “hit” us with the realization that our powers aren’t very great in any area.

Walk in a meadow; look at daisies, violets, gentians, wild roses. Look at pictures if you can’t get near flowers. Think a while about the fact that God designed these diverse textures and colors as “clothing.” Oh, says Jesus, how small is your faith if you can’t trust this same person to clothe you. Verse 29 shows us that he wants us not to think about a coming depression, how it might affect our daily need of food and drink. We are not to be “doubtful” or to worry as the world would worry. If we lose everything, we are not to react in the same way. Our Heavenly Father knows we have need of these material things, and that he will “add” them to us, if we put first things first. And what is first? “But rather seek ye first the kingdom of God.”

How? Again we are given one area of practical direction. How can I know God’s will? In one area it is surely clear enough, in the area of material things. I am to share what I have. I am to “lose my life in order to save it,” but I am also to give away my money in order to save it. The early church did this to such an extent that there were no people in want among them. They bought shoes and food for one another. They stopped worrying about hoarding against times ahead, and really tried to be practical about what Jesus had said, recorded for us in Luke.

“Provide yourselves with bags which wax not old”: what marvelous bags are these? When we give as unto the Lord, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sharing with people we see daily, as well as giving that the Word of God might go forth, suddenly we have saved all that in special bags that are forever new and cannot be snatched!

But more is said. It is not just in a supernaturally safe bag, but this actual dollar, franc, cash, yen, florin, this actual money, so Jesus says, when it is given away is stored now in heaven. We can actually put “treasures in heaven” that will be discovered to be there, someday!

Wait a minute. Be quiet in some hidden place in the woods, or in a room alone. Is your heart, my heart, really in heaven? Are our thoughts filled with excitement as to how our treasures are growing there? Do we look forward to what is being prepared for us by Jesus? Can we really shrug our shoulders and say to the Lord, “Thank you for the warning. I expected the riches to take wings. I love you, Lord, for being so open with me about this. Thank you for telling me where to store a good proportion of my goods. I’m full of thoughts about heaven. It’s really true that my investments are all there.”

And then next comes: “Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching.”

Eutychus and His Kin: September 13, 1974

O Time, O Mores!

When the noble Roman M. Tullius Cicero noticed how bad things were getting in the republic, he exclaimed in his accustomed Latin, “O tempora, O mores!” (O what times, O what morals!) If he were among us today he could be even more specific and cry out, O Time! For widely read but aging Time is rapidly revealing a delicacy of moral judgment so precious as to make even that stern Roman pall.

Recently Time’s tender feelings were aroused by the melancholy fate of the “mules,” unfortunate creatures who reach a “tragic trail’s end” in Mexican prisons. “Mules” are amateur smugglers of things like cocaine and heroin, “desperately naïve” persons whose simple, childlike hopes for a bright tomorrow are dashed by the vigilance of Mexican customs inspectors and the implacable severity of Mexican courts. Professional smugglers, Time explains, label the carefree, fun-loving amateurs whom they use as couriers “mules,” but “the amateurs could not care less: the potential profits are sizable—though not as big as the risks” (Time, August 12, 1974, p. 36).

The mules’ motives, Time seems to be suggesting, are above reproach: “A junior high school teacher and his wife had joined a coke mule team for $5,000—a down payment, they hoped, on a farm.” What could be more praiseworthy? Although Cicero would not have understood, at least Virgil, author of the buccolic Georgics, might have. In any case, Time does. Even more pitiable are two crafty grandmothers from California, for their motive in smuggling was to get “bonuses” that would “let them retire comfortably.”

Prisoners of both sexes must endure abuse, insult, and maltreatment in Mexican prisons, Time sympathetically points out. Imprisoned American men are given degrading jobs such as cleaning toilets—hardly what they had hoped for when they agreed to transport the precious, habit-forming drugs back to the United States. Women prisoners, chosen by “professionals” in the hope that their good looks would help them whisk undetected through customs, suffer even more distressing fates.

Of course it would be unwise for Eutychus, who has not even been effective in a modest plea for a new approach to bribery in American jurisprudence, to cast aspersions on Mexican justice, but there are deficiencies. Perhaps it will not be taken amiss if he merely repeats Time’s discerning remark that many Americans imprisoned in Mexico stay in jail for months before they are brought to trial.

Of course, rigorists might point out that many of those “hooked” on cocaine or heroin—even when it was transported by amateurs—become addicts for life. But on the other hand, the addiction usually shortens that life. Had Time pointed that out, too, it would doubtless have aroused even more sympathy for the languishing mules. But where moral values are concerned, not even Time can think of everything.

O Time, O mores!

EUTYCHUS VI

Filing For Aid

I must take time out to express my heartfelt appreciation for your article “Exorcism; Is It For Real?” by John Warwick Montgomery (July 26). I am amazed at all the information Montgomery shares in just three and one-half pages! I am filing this superb article for reference to aid me in my counseling work.

NATHANAEL OLSON

Director of Familytime Ministries

Milwaukee, Wis.

I really appreciated your article on exorcism.… To begin with, the author’s humorous yet serious style drove home the reality of the satanic. As a young Christian recently saved out of the occult and a college student, I can verify the terrifying rise in demon oppression and possession due to a growing interest in the occult by students. Most appreciated was the author’s explaining that while Christ’s method of exorcism is “simple” it is not “simplistic.” I’ve seen many people run into trouble by thinking they knew everything on the subject but didn’t have the Christian maturity to apply it.

Also badly needed and interesting was Montgomery’s brief history of exorcism, particularly in relation to church history. Such an explanation gives a feeling of continuity and permanence to an often baffling subject.… I’d like to thank your magazine for printing such a level-headed, practical article on a heated and current issue. Thank you for providing sound information where it is needed. I trust you will continue to do so in future articles.

KELLY CLARKE

Vicksburg, Miss.

I find it altogether incredible that CHRISTIANITY TODAY continues to offer approval to William Blatty’s book and film The Exorcist, as in the article by John Warwick Montgomery and Cheryl Forbes’s [review]. “The maturity of The Exorcist,” Montgomery asserts, “was nowhere better demonstrated than in its recognition that in the last analysis, where all else fails, only Substitution rids man of the evil powers arrayed against him.” Favorable reference is then made to Jesus our Great Substitute, and for this I sigh relief. In the film, however, the name of Jesus is either an obscenity or else an exercise in futility since in the end the Roman rite of exorcism is seen to fail. I just can’t believe that Montgomery, of all people, is really praising Father Karras’s act of suicide as both heroic and substitutionary, though this is unquestionably the intention of the author.

We need a more incisive critique of The Exorcist than has been offered thus far. Little has been said about the mind-manipulating use of images wherein the Cross is desecrated but the priestly collar is given a halo-like reverence. The book and film may yet prove to be the nearest theological equivalent to Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit, expressing in a most subtle way a priest’s own sense of absurdity and futility.

A. PATTERSON LEE

Tremont Temple Baptist Church

Boston, Mass.

Setting Straight?

There are two inaccurate statements concerning Southern Baptists in the editorial “A License to Live” (July 26) which I ask you, please, in the cause of fairness, honesty, and Christian brotherhood, to set straight.… The editorial says, “Martha Willing proposes first tax disincentives for parents who have more than two children (a suggestion taken over by the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention …).” This statement is utterly false. Southern Baptists in general and the Christian Life Commission in particular have long experienced false accusations of this kind from some sources.… A few lines further down the editorial says, “Southern Baptists and others who incorporated the first step of Population Dynamics’ ‘disincentives’ into their own educational programs should take a long look.…” Since such materials have not been incorporated in any shape, form, or fashion in Southern Baptist educational programs, this statement, too, is utterly false.

FOY VALENTINE

The Christian Life Commission

Nashville, Tenn.

“Issues and Answers: Population Explosion,” a pamphlet prepared by the SBC Christian Life Commission (460 James Robertson Parkway, Nashville, Tenn. 37219), of which Dr. Valentine is executive secretary-treasurer, contains the recommendations to which we drew attention.—ED.

Less Than Objective

Ed Plowman’s report on the World Evangelical Fellowship General Assembly left something to be desired as an objective evaluation of what took place in Chateau d’Oex and the future of the WEF.… In-depth discussion and re-evaluation of the entire purpose of the WEF took place, with input from representatives of all continents. It was then necessary to “get bogged down” for several sessions and make the structural changes to accomplish this purpose. As an outcome, the WEF is placing major emphasis on regional offices and services and the creation of commissions or associations in order to serve a broader range of evangelicals worldwide and in special fields.

Plowman’s report failed to mention many of the official actions which did take place.… The Theological Assistance Programme (TAP) will continue to be a principal program. Steering committees were also appointed to complete development of both the World Evangelical Communications Association and the international body of missions associations. During the assembly, reports were received from at least five relief and evangelical aid agencies within the WEF family that are cooperating worldwide, mostly through evangelical churches and missions.…

Membership in the WEF has grown by 50 per cent in the last two years. The organization is in healthy financial condition, with the new budget providing for two full-time executives at the international level. We are much encouraged by the unanimity of the official actions and outcomes, and look forward to the Lord’s guidance and leading as the Fellowship develops among evangelicals worldwide.

CLYDE W. TAYLOR

International Secretary

World Evangelical Fellowship

Washington, D. C.

Never having been a magazine columnist I can only imagine the difficulties there may be in accurately reporting an event. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S account of the Sixth General Assembly of the World Evangelical Fellowship illustrates the problem. What apparently escaped your correspondent was the fact that the consideration of the constitution of the WEF was directly related to the organization’s purposes and goals.… Moreover, it should have been noted that the delegates’ willingness to consider modifications in the WEF structure in light of the Lausanne Congress was actually one of the first items of business. It was not therefore incidental and was assumed in the discussions that followed.… Then it should be emphasized that the adoption of the budget did indeed include provision for an international secretary. This is one of the reasons the budget was so relatively substantial compared with previous years.

HUDSON T. ARMERDING

President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

Almost Sufficient

It was only after extended debate with myself that I decided to renew my subscription at my last opportunity—and only a free book bonus moved me to do so. But your latest issue heartened me considerably and was itself almost sufficient cause for unending loyal reading in the future. I hope it was an omen.…

Malcolm Muggeridge’s ICOWE address was magnificent.… the pace was renewed in the Charles Lewis Taylor article on “The Numinous in Worship.” What “made” the article was the author’s heavy dependence on the work of Rudolf Otto and recognition of the suggestions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And the copy of the Lausanne Covenant revealed numerous similarities to our own Missouri Synod “Mission Affirmations” in essential features. And then the amazing recognition given Rudolf Bultmann on his ninetieth birthday! Who would have expected such an affirmative comment on this twentieth-century theological giant, so richly deserved and so much more Christian than the cheap shots some so-called evangelicals feel compelled to deliver? And the “frosting on the cake” came with the letter of F. F. Bruce, acknowledging with classic simplicity that “higher criticism” is just one more tool of the trade for serious biblical scholars.

I refrain from a plethora of complimentary adjectives for reasons of space. May I suggest that similar issues in coming weeks seek to maintain the superlative character displayed here by conscious comparison with that of August 16?

KENNETH ROGAHN

Trinity Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Anna, Ill.

Surprised By Celebration

Just a note to say that I was surprised and deeply pleased by Cheryl Forbes’s coverage of Bishop John Maury Allin’s installation. I’m a new subscriber and a Missouri Lutheran, both of which may help to explain my reaction. She has a solid instinct for the importance of celebration.

ARTHUR SIMON

Director

Bread for the World

New York, N. Y.

Books

The Refiner’s Fire: Literature

Flight To Fantasy

In his Preface to Shakespeare Samuel Johnson wrote: “Whatever is remote from common appearance is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; … [such things as] adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments.” That is to say, only children and unlearned people enjoy stories of fantasy.

Many people, some critics among them, thoroughly agree with both Dr. Johnson’s conclusion that fantasy is not worthwhile for adults, and his reason that fantasy does not come to grips with things-as-they-are. But there are problems with this harsh judgment. In the first place, think of all the people, from the beginning of Western literature to our own time, who have otherwise passed for intelligent, mature readers and yet must be said to have “vulgar” or childish taste because they enjoyed books about adventures and enchantments. And it is not just readers we will lose. Consider the authors, in English literature alone, whom we must censure or even banish on this account; among them are the Gawain poet, Malory, Spenser, Shakespeare (whom Johnson was praising), and several of the Romantic poets. At this rate we may decide that Dr. Johnson’s critical dictum had better be overhauled, if not scrapped altogether.

In recent years we have seen people who are more familiar with the geography of Tolkien’s Middle Earth than with that of their own country or state; we have known adults who would rather reflect on Christian truth in Lewis’s Narnia books than read his or anyone else’s theological works; and, if reviewers’ predictions can be trusted, we are likely to see another publishing record like that of The Lord of the Rings set by a new children’s book, Watership Down by Richard Adams, which will certainly be read by more adults than children. “Curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice said. I think we are not curious enough about the popularity of children’s fantasy among adults.

Fantasy, in literature as in life, is concerned with that-which-is-not. In literature, fantasy results in the creation of completely new worlds—“secondary worlds” as J. R. R. Tolkien calls them in his essay “On Fairy Stories.” That essay and two others by C. S. Lewis (“On Stories” and “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”) lay the groundwork for a serious consideration of children’s fantasy. It deserves attention because it gives pleasure to many adults if for no other reason. Perhaps even more interesting is the growing popularity, among Christians, of the books by Lewis (the Narnia chronicles), Tolkien (The Hobbit, the trilogy The Lord of the Rings), and George Macdonald (the Curdie books). I would like to suggest three reasons for this popularity, though they are by no means the only ones.

To begin with, the secondary worlds of fantasy provide a sense of completeness that is missing in more realistic fiction. The virtues of this completeness are two: the pleasure of a travelogue, and the possibility of enchantment. One virtue derives from concrete detail, and the other from the insubstantiality of atmosphere. Both are to be found distinctively in fantasy.

Each of the fantasy worlds exists independently of our world. As a result, each has its own geography, citizens, and customs. If the fantasy world is depicted convincingly, and if it provides that conviction of truth which Virginia Woolf calls “integrity,” it arouses and holds our interest by its very foreign-ness. Anyone who has ever pored over a copy of National Geographic will know the experience. Disparities of climate, dress, and custom between the fantasy world and our world are cause for curiosity and speculation.

Dorothy Sayers once said that one either is, or is not, the kind of person who is susceptible to the chill of the words “It is later than you think.” So it is with the romance of other worlds. To some readers, but not to all, it is both a longing and an end to longing to enter a world where enormous consequences depend on the conjunction of supernatural design and personal courage. There are readers, and they come from all age groups, who speculate with intense curiosity and delight on worlds where animals have human speech, or where trees and mountains possess a ponderous thought and volition, or where different races of creatures are rational and yet distinct from one another. Nineteenth-century authors, in their wide-canvas novels, registered with precision the differences between the way a lady of fashion responded to life and the way a tradesman’s wife did so. But there are savorable differences, too, in the way a modest Mole and a fatuous Toad and a brusque Badger respond to life; there are whole ranges of qualities and abilities peculiar to rock-delving, earthy dwarves that are in contrast to the poetry and song of elves of the forest.

You either have a taste for such things or you don’t. If you do, the worlds of fantasy literature have a significant advantage over merely foreign places in our own world, transmitted to us by photographs. No photograph confines our mental pictures of Mirkwood, Cair Paravel, or Prydain. But they are no less immediate for that. Lewis once wrote, “I have been more curious about travels … from Morna Moruna to Koshtra Belorn than about those recorded in Hakluyt [The Principal Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589]. The proliferation of maps of fantasy worlds—Middle Earth, Narnia, Prydain—testifies to this kind of pleasure. When a fictional world is both complete and well conceived, its very imaginative concreteness invites the use of a map.

At the opposite pole from this descriptive concreteness, yet equally characteristic of fantasy, is the atmosphere of enchantment, the wind blowing from the realm of faërie. It is an atmosphere that readers of Chretien de Troyes and Sir Thomas Malory have learned to prize. Most evident in Tolkien’s books and the fairy tales, slightly less in Lewis, Macdonald, and Lloyd Alexander (the Prydain chronicles), and hardly at all in Alice in Wonderland or The Wind in the Willows, it is compounded of mystery, enigma, and magic; and it is achieved in part at least by what is left out of explanations and descriptions:

Gil-galad was an Elven-king,

Of him the harpers sadly sing;

The last whose realm was fair and free

Between the Mountains and the Sea

But long ago he rode away,

And where he dwelleth none can say;

For into darkness fell his star

In Mordor where the shadows are.

J. R. R. Tolkien,

The Lord of the Rings

The desire is all, in this atmosphere. Remoteness is the essence of the enchantment of fantasy. Only at a distance can a dragon remain the heraldic creature of enamel-bright scales, wicked claws, and fiery mouth. Brought to the foreground by realism, he must share the lethargy and wrinkly skin of his near relative, the lizard.

If the sense of completeness, with its attendant pleasures of travelogue and enchantment, is one reason for the popularity of children’s fantasy, an even stronger reason is its ability to set us free. Reading fantasy, for me at least, always feels like a holiday. Tolkien discusses at length the escape offered by fantasy, and we will come back to that in a moment. But the kind of freedom I have in mind has to do with problems and their solutions.

Both the problems and the solutions in fantasy narratives are remote from us, and once again their very remoteness is a pleasure. We praise great fiction, and properly so, for an action that exemplifies universal problems of the human condition. We all have reason enough to know the “temptations common to man.” But for that very reason we can turn with enjoyment, in fantasy, to the spectacle of a protagonist who meets, not an alienated society of the consequences of flawed vision or his own inadequacies, but a wizard or a giant or a land gripped by evil enchantment. His problems are remote from ours, and so are the solutions. Cloaks of invisibility and rings of power would be of little use in our world.

Jungian critics would see the struggle between heroes and monsters in fantasy as archetypes of the struggle between good and evil forces within us. And I think it is true, as I will try to show later, that one great pleasure we receive from fantasy comes from the opportunity it gives us to align ourselves so completely with what is good against what is unequivocally evil. Nevertheless, there is a pleasure inherent simply in the great disparity between those worlds and ours, and part of that pleasure comes from a temporary withdrawal from our own kinds of problems. As Alice said to herself, while she was falling mile after mile down the Rabbit Hole, “Well! After such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of falling down stairs!”

Of course, the disparaging epithet “escapist” is always easy to attach to literature of fantasy. Tolkien objects to this kind of criticism by insisting that escape is a perfectly admirable and mature thing to do in our circumstances. For we really are imprisoned in an ugly, depersonalized, and barren world, he says; the only sensible thing to do about imprisonment is to try to escape.

I would add a further objection to “escapist” criticism: escape from the external appearances of the modern world, or even from the psychological introspection of modern fiction, is not necessarily an evasion of the moral ambiguities of human life. It is true that appearances in fantasy literature conform far more closely to the reality they represent than is the case in our world; that is, evil in fantasy is usually easily identifiable by its ugliness and open malice, whereas evil in our world is often more subtle and hard to define. But it is easy to exaggerate the complexity of evil and good in our own time and world as a means of excusing a half-hearted struggle for what we know to be right against what we know to be wrong. “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” asks a character in The Lord of the Rings. “As he ever has judged,” comes the reply. “Good and ill have not changed.… It is a man’s part to discern them.”

I think, too, that critics who sneer at the stories of fantasy do so frequently because of their assumptions about the nature of the universe. If supernatural intervention in our natural world is a lie, a baseless myth formulated by primitive peoples to help them face their hostile environment, then it follows that books that depend upon magic or enchantment for the defeat of evil will appear to be fanciful and cowardly in the extreme. Christians, who do not share those anti-supernatural assumptions (and some non-Christians who wish they did not), may judge the stories very differently. Not that magic swords or enchanted castles are any more believable for Christians than for non-Christians; it is just that the idea of a miracle is not, to them, an offense.

A third pleasure fantasy offers is its moral framework. It is here that I think we will find one of the most important reasons why parents in growing numbers are borrowing their children’s books. In his essay “Religion and Literature” T. S. Eliot contends that “literature affects directly … the whole of what we are” and that the contemporary literature affecting us now “is simply unaware of, simply cannot understand the meaning of the primacy of the supernatural over the natural life.” Whatever the value of the tortured or despairing insights into a universe barren of God and meaning which we get from modern playwrights and novelists, we must not underestimate the vigilance of intellect and spirit necessary for the Christian to counter the overall experience of futility he receives.

Certainly no one would want to compare the modest productions of children’s fantasy writers with the gifted writing of serious modern authors. Tolkien himself once said, “On a strict judgment all children’s books are poor books.” But many of them do offer, in addition to their other pleasurable qualities, the virtue of a supernatural moral framework unavailable in almost any other worthwhile contemporary literature. Lewis’s world of Narnia is overarched by a supernatural order that combines wonder and enchantment with clear, luminous, reflections of Christian truth. Macdonald’s books, too, combine the atmosphere of faërie with Christianity. The supernatural in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, while not specifically Christian, has many of the same qualities as the others.

Beyond the presence of the supernatural in these books, goodness itself is admirable, lovely, and heroic. It is no easy task to create a hero both good and likable, but the fantasy writers accomplish it repeatedly. In literary worlds where goodness is made desirable and where order and meaning derive from a morally absolute supernature, the twentieth-century Christian can momentarily relax his vigilance and free his attention for the humble but refreshing pleasures of nature, friendship, and adventure. Perhaps more significantly, an unbeliever can feel he is a stranger in a gracious place, and wish he were at home.

In a recent textbook on children’s literature, an educator has said this of fairy tales:

they reiterate the old verities that kindness and goodness will triumph over evil if they are backed by wisdom, wit and courage. These are basic truths we should like built into the depth of the child’s consciousness [May H. Arbuthnot, Children and Books].

It would be well for us if the lessons of kindness, goodness, and courage could be learned once in childhood and never forgotten. But, as Dr. Johnson observed (and we need not argue with him here), men need more often to be reminded than taught.

It would be a shame to leave the deliciously sly humor of Alice or The Wind in the Willows only to children, who are often ill-equipped to enjoy it. It would be a greater shame to leave the evocative beauty of Tolkien’s prose to children whose ears are hardly tuned to it. And it would be perhaps the greatest shame of all, for Christian and non-Christian alike, to lose the opportunity of meeting the Lion in Narnia. Many of us will never come closer, here, to a quickening of the heart toward heaven than we do at the end of The Last Battle when the cry rings out, “Higher up and farther in!” To leave these to children, to neglect them ourselves out of mistaken motives of embarrassment or indifference, is simply careless—and childish.

MIRIAM JENSEN HENDRIX

Miriam Jensen Hendrix is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Chicago.

Watergate Ethics

Those who believe in the depravity of human nature have not been theologically unprepared for the almost daily barrage of odious revelations connected with Watergate. Some others seem to be naively surprised that any politicians would ever stoop to break the law to achieve electoral victory.

Another group of self-styled ethicists has been curiously silent about Watergate. Those moral philosophers have been proclaiming for years that no actions are inherently right or wrong; only the situation can determine whether an act is immoral. In the face of the nation’s revulsion at the Watergate scandal, perhaps silence has seemed most expedient for the situation ethicists.

However, a statement on Watergate made by Billy Graham served to elicit a comment from the nation’s leading situationist, Joseph Fletcher. Graham’s statement read in part, “A nation confused for years by the teaching of situational ethics now finds itself dismayed by those in government who apparently practiced it.” Time magazine editorialized, “Graham is groping wildly in connecting situation ethics and the Watergate cover-up.” And Joseph Fletcher was equally eager to dissociate situationism from the Watergate stigma. His comment: “It is a misinterpretation. Those involved in Watergate weren’t conducting themselves according to situation ethics. They didn’t weigh the moral options. Their one guiding principle was to win at any price. Graham knows or ought to know better” (Time, June 10, 1974, p. 18).

Is Watergate an example of situation ethics or is it not? Who is “groping wildly”—Billy Graham or Joseph Fletcher?

In his book Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Westminster, 1966) Joseph Fletcher defends the notion that no act is inherently right or wrong; all actions should be judged only by whether or not they were done lovingly. In Fletcher’s words, “All laws and rules and principles and ideals and norms, are only contingent, only valid if they happen to serve love in any situation” (p. 30). Adultery, lying, murder, and vote fraud are not always wrong; in some situations they might be loving (i.e., moral) acts.

Although Fletcher gives confusing and contradictory definitions of love (eliciting James Gustafson’s remark that “love” is a word that runs through Fletcher’s book like a greased pig), the definition used most often is that a loving act is one that produces the greatest good for the greatest number (p. 95). Like the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, Fletcher believes that a moral act is one that benefits the majority; an immoral act is one that helps the minority and hurts the majority. We should aim to serve as many neighbors as we can.

Leaving aside the tantalizing question of whether any consensus could be reached regarding what is the best for the majority, let us return to Watergate. Did not Mr. Nixon’s cohorts believe that his reelection was the best for the nation as a whole? Certainly. Senator McGovern’s political stance was frightening to a large number of Americans. Nixon’s landslide victory proved that the nation agreed with the view of the President’s trusted aides: the best course for the nation was to give Nixon his coveted “four more years.”

Fletcher says that when love (i.e., the best for the greatest number) conflicts with the law, we ought to “sin bravely” and do what is best for the majority. The news from Washington during the past year has convinced us that the Watergate conspirators followed just that principle.

Along with utilitarianism, Fletcher accepts the ethical premise that the end justifies the means. “What was once charged as an accusation against the Jesuits is here frankly embraced: finis sanctificat media” (Moral Responsibility, Westminster, 1967, p. 23). Fletcher relates the story of how Lenin was becoming weary of being told that he had no ethics because he used force in foreign and civil wars. Some Tolstoyan idealists accused him of believing that the end justifies the means. Finally he shot back at them, “If the end does not justify the means, then in the name of sanity and justice, what does?” Fletcher agrees. If the end does not justify the means, then nothing else does (Situation Ethics, p. 121).

If Mr. Nixon’s reelection was a worthy end (and the majority of Americans agreed it was), why should his reelection campaign be cramped by adherence to moral codes? If—as Fletcher suggests—the only alternative to a loveless code is to have a codeless love, Nixon’s committee faced a decision: Shall we obey the law or do what is best for the majority? From the standpoint of situation ethics they should be commended for having the courage to dispense with the law in order to serve the majority. The end justifies the means.

It is odd (more accurately, inconsistent) that Fletcher should condemn the Watergate conspirators because their guiding principle was to win at any price. Situationally, there is nothing wrong with winning at any price if winning is the best for the greatest number.

But might not the Watergate conspirators have been acting selfishly, desiring political power? If their guilt or innocence depends on that question it would be difficult to prove their guilt. Who could prove they did not have the good of America in mind when they planned their strategy?

Situationally, the ultimate question of guilt or innocence can be determined only by the results achieved. In Fletcher’s words, “Christians say that nothing is right unless it helps somebody” (Moral Responsibility, p. 40). The nation thought it was helped. President Nixon was reelected.

At this point someone might be tempted to respond: But given the fact that Watergate was uncovered, given Mr. Nixon’s present troubles, we might have been better off with McGovern! If so, the predicament of situation ethics is only highlighted. The simple fact is that we as mortals cannot predict the future. Fletcher candidly admits, “We can’t always guess the future, even though we are always being forced to try” (Situation Ethics, p. 136). In order to apply situationism we would have to calculate not merely the immediate results but all the consequences of an act throughout an indefinite future. Such a task demands omniscience.

Fletcher apparently is not concerned with calculations. He does acknowledge that “with the development of computers all sorts of analytical ethical possibilities open up” (Situation Ethics, p. 117). However, computers would have to be able not only to predict the future (so far little success has come from such attempts) but also to make some decisions as to what kind of a future should be sought. Fletcher theorizes: “It is possible that by learning how to assign numerical values to the factors at stake in problems of conscience, love’s calculations can gain accuracy in an ethical ars major” (Situation Ethics, p. 118). However, such calculations are as yet impossible. In the meantime no person can ever be sure he is making a right moral decision. Hence, the moral life is as yet impossible too.

Watergate is a striking example of applied situation ethics. Fletcher’s objection only reveals the embarrassment of those who have told us that loving concern should surpass all moral laws. It is Joseph Fletcher and not Billy Graham who is groping wildly. Apparently Fletcher feels uncomfortable when his chickens come home to roost.

Lausanne 74: An Appraisal

The International Congress on World Evangelization, known as Lausanne 74, brought together 4,000 people (participants, observers, guests, press) from all over the globe to concentrate on a single problem: how to implement the biblical mandate to evangelize the world.

Lausanne came at a turning point in twentieth-century Christianity. Not since the time of the Reformation has the Church been confronted with so many disparate opinions, torn by so many antithetical viewpoints.

Today there are two main movements in Protestant Christendom: the conciliar or ecumenical movement, represented by the World Council of Churches, and the evangelical movement, unstructured, composed of millions of believers in and out of the conciliar movement. Until recently, the wave of the future seemed to lie with the ecumenical movement, which openly or covertly supports a number of ideas that evangelicals cannot accept: syncretism, universalism, and unbiblical views of the mission of the Church, evangelism, and conversion. But within the last decade the evangelical movement, long amorphous, has begun to take shape and increase in force. Lausanne strengthened this considerably.

The World Congress on Evangelism, held in Berlin in 1966, raised the first banner in recent times around which evangelicals could rally. Berlin was followed by regional evangelism conferences in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America. And these, in turn, were a prelude to Lausanne 74.

At Berlin a biblical theology of evangelism emerged that boldly challenged the increasing theological deviations of the WCC. Although its findings had little influence on the conciliar movement, it had an important effect: it gave visibility to the evangelical movement and showed it to be a force that had to be taken into account. Thus when the Uppsala Assembly of the WCC convened in 1968 a body of people called “conservative evangelicals” participated in the proceedings.

Uppsala’s response to the theological signal generated at Berlin was decidedly negative. With a few minor exceptions Uppsala’s answer was further theological compromise, syncretistic concessions, universalistic presuppositions, a radically changed view of the mission of the Church, and a commitment to revolution to break down political structures and to bring in socialism by the overthrow of capitalism. In short, from an evangelical perspective Uppsala was a disaster.

In 1972 the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism met in Bangkok. Again the “conservative evangelicals” were represented. Evangelicals were desperately hoping that this missionary arm of the WCC would reverse Uppsala, that it would challenge the churches to a new missionary outreach aimed at persuading men to be reconciled to God by repentance and personal faith in the crucified Lord. They hoped in vain. The new leaders of the WCC and the CWME made it clear by what they said and failed to say that the WCC as it was constituted in Amsterdam in 1948 no longer existed.

Lausanne 74 was not intended to be a response to either Uppsala or Bangkok, but it has raised a challenge that cannot be ignored. The evangelical movement, unstructured, with no hierarchical base, no particular ecclesiastical endorsement or money, is now locked in combat with the ecumenical movement. No one who attended Uppsala, Bangkok, and Lausanne can fail to realize the true nature of the conflict. At its heart are two antithetical gospels. Whoever accepts one must repudiate the other.

A word should be said about the role of Billy Graham in this emerging evangelical movement. He dreamed of and supported the Berlin Congress in 1966. He was, in one way or another, involved in most of the regional congresses. And there would have been no Lausanne without Graham’s initiative. His ministry so commends itself to evangelicals that through his influence it was possible to raise the more than three million dollars required to underwrite the congress. Much of this went into congress scholarships. Hundreds of participants had everything except money to qualify them for the congress. That they were able to come was one of Graham’s significant contributions to Lausanne.

Lausanne dealt substantively with two questions: (1) What is it that evangelicals believe and are called upon to do? and (2) What strategies and methods can evangelicals, working together, use to complete the task God has called them to do?

Lausanne brought together many of the finest evangelical minds and the most devoted and committed servants of God. The excellence of the program, the wide range of small strategy and study groups, the mingling of men and women across racial, class, and denominational lines, and the free expression of differing opinions on some questions were hallmarks of the congress. The papers and the opinions expressed there will be published in October.

The congress was clear in its view of the Bible. This was reflected in the Lausanne Covenant. When the covenant’s statement on Scripture was first written, a number of participants thought it was not strong enough. It was then redrafted to reflect the historic evangelical viewpoint more clearly. The statement reads: “We affirm the divine inspiration, truthfulness and authority of both Old and New Testament Scriptures in their entirety as the only written word of God, without error in all that it affirms, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice” (my italics).

Susumu Uda, a seminary professor and pastor in Japan, said in his paper “Biblical Authority and Evangelism”: “The real issue before the entire Church and every individual Christian today is: What is to be our view of and attitude toward the Bible?” He concluded that “the Scripture possesses an authority so great that it cannot be broken. What the Scripture says will stand steadfast and cannot be annulled.” By contrast, said Uda, in the WCC “the Bible is viewed by many as merely a collection of fallible human witnesses to the experience of the so-called ‘authentic way of human existence’.… And correlative to this relativistic view of the Bible … is a strongly humanistic and socialistic view of the Church’s message and her mission.”

In his paper entitled “Form and Freedom in the Church” Francis A. Schaeffer, author and the leader of L’Abri Fellowship, said: “The first half of Genesis is history, space-time history, the Fall is a space-time Fall, or we have no knowledge of what Jesus came to die for.… Our whole answer to evil rests upon the historic, space-time Fall.” This note sounded by Uda and Schaeffer and by Billy Graham in his first address was endorsed by the congress. And this view of the Bible is quite antithetical to that held by the leaders and many others within the conciliar movement.

Lausanne spoke plainly and unequivocally about the Gospel. John R. W. Stott said:

The good news (the Gospel) is Jesus, and the good news about Jesus which we announce is that he died for our sins and was raised from death by the Father, according to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and that on the basis of his death and resurrection he offers forgiveness of sins.

German university professor Peter Beyerhaus spoke of “the vicarious death of the Messiah.” “To evangelize” said the congress in its covenant, “is to spread the good news” of the “historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God.” In other words, the Gospel has specific content and is meant to be proclaimed, promising men forgiveness of sins when they repent and turn to Christ in faith.

At Lausanne the Gospel was tied to the mission of the Church, and that mission was defined as the evangelization of the world. So the covenant said that “in the church’s mission of sacrificial service evangelism is primary” (my italics). The urgency of the task was stressed: men are really lost and will perish if they do not hear and respond to the Gospel, and 2,700 million people, “more than two-thirds of mankind,” are “yet to be evangelized.” The spirit of sacrifice required to do this job was emphasized, and covenant signers were called upon to cultivate “a simple lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.”

At Lausanne, social action was not put on the same plane with the proclamation of the Gospel, nor was it given standing as a substitute for the Gospel. But it surfaced again and again, and Christians were called to work for justice for all mankind. Francis Schaeffer drew attention to the fact that God made all people in his own image, and Christians must treat all with dignity. He argued that racism has arisen precisely because men have denied the authority of Scripture and made taboos apart from and contrary to the Word of God.

In a paper entitled “Evangelism and Man’s Search for Freedom, Justice and Fulfillment,” Samuel Escobar, a Latin American who is the secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Canada, was highly critical of North America and more specifically of certain aspects of the American way of life, which has had a pervasive influence around the world. Escobar criticized “American imperialism,” under which, he said, the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. He said that out of every hundred people in the world’s population, only seven are North Americans, but these seven “spend one-half of all the money, eat one-seventh of all the food and use one-half of all the bathtubs. These seven people would have ten times more doctors than the other ninety-three. Meanwhile the seven would continue to get more and more and the ninety-three less and less.” (This was written before the Arab oil crisis and the changes this set in motion in the Western world’s economic situation.) Escobar stressed the relation between evangelism and social evils and said that the Christian calling compels Christ’s followers to become involved in the fight for social change, in the overturning of the status quo. (Absent from Escobar’s catalogue of social evils were some solidly entrenched ones that cause untold physical and spiritual debasement: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and pornography.)

René Padilla, associate general secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Buenos Aires, spoke strongly about “culture Christianity” as expressed by the “American way of life.” He finds this “no less harmful to the cause of the Gospel than ‘secular Christianity.’ ” Padilla went on to criticize an other-worldly gospel that stresses man’s vertical relation to God but ignores man’s horizontal relation to man, a salvation that does not issue in works to heal the sick, bind up the wounds of those who have been assaulted, feed those who are hungry, and clothe those who are naked. In its report on the congress Time magazine (August 5 issue) quoted Padilla to emphasize the point that Lausanne took social action seriously but not in the way that the ecumenical movement does; Lausanne did so without detracting from the priority of gospel proclamation.

Carl F. H. Henry, lecturer-at-large of World Vision and first editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, offered the most persuasive arguments for Christian involvement in social action in his seminar paper “Evangelism and Personal and Social Ethics.” He said that Christian participation in political life is a biblical mandate. Henry covered the gamut of personal and social ethical problems, showing how the Christian ought to be involved in fighting various social evils. Whereas Escobar seemed to be saying that socialism is preferable to capitalism and that many Latin Americans espouse Marxism because of its emphasis on justice, Henry banged hard against the idea that socialism is a panacea or Marxism a viable option. “Christians,” he said, “must indict the moral wrongs of human destitution, suffering, affliction, and oppression.” But he went on to say:

Christians must contrast socialist uncertainty about the identity of the ideal man and the express nature of the new society with Christian certainty about the Second Adam and the regenerate society as a beachhead for the coming Kingdom. Christians must emphasize that Marxist proposals for utopia do not really, as claimed, overcome human alienation, but in fact perpetuate the alienation by substituting one preferred class for another, and deepen it by ignoring man’s fundamental spiritual relationship to the living God.

The Lausanne Covenant said, “Evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty,” which includes “judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.” At the same time it carefully noted that “social action is not evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation.”

The seminar on universalism dealt in depth with two major questions: Will all men be saved, and is there salvation for those who die without the knowledge of Christ, particularly those who embrace other religions or are syncretistic? The seminar and the Lausanne Covenant made plain the evangelical theological commitment of the participants at this point. The covenant proclaimed that “those who reject Christ … condemn themselves to eternal separation from God.” “To proclaim Jesus as ‘the Saviour of the world’ is not to affirm that all men are either automatically or ultimately saved, still less to affirm that all religions offer salvation in Christ.” Moreover, the seminar on universalism denied the possibility that any man can die without having had a chance, since every person has at least the light of conscience written in his heart even if he does not have the light of the law or the light of the Gospel. Lausanne responded to the conciliar movement’s Bangkok challenge by forthrightly repudiating both universalism and syncretism.

The evangelization of the world was Lausanne’s chief concern. Since the Berlin congress in 1966 the world’s population had increased by 590,193,076 persons. During the ten days at Lausanne it increased by 1,852,837. But the emphasis on world evangelization was not simply academic. Participants were leading unbelievers in Lausanne to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. On the one Sunday of the congress Billy Graham held a mass meeting, and the stadium was packed with a crowd estimated at between 25 and 40 thousand. Hundreds of people came forward at the invitation to register their decisions for Jesus Christ. It was an impressive illustration of mass evangelism and a moving demonstration of how the Spirit works when the Gospel is preached in all its simplicity and richness.

The conciliar movement and the Marxists both sound the note of a forthcoming man-made utopia. The eschatology of Lausanne left no room for such farfetched and unrealistic dreams. Rather, there was the warning of the coming of false christs and false prophets before the advent of the Antichrist. “God will perfect his kingdom,” and utopia will dawn when there is “the new heaven and earth.” The covenant was plain: “We reject as a proud, self-confident dream the notion that man can ever build a utopia on earth.”

Malcolm Muggeridge in his address and I in mine sounded the apocalyptic note of impending judgment and of the cataclysm to come (Muggeridge’s address appeared in the August 16 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY). Men and nations without God are everywhere engaged in the serious business of committing suicide. In its multifaceted forms this tendency can be observed by all who care to see. Muggeridge said:

We see around us on every hand the decay of the institutions and instruments of power. On every hand intimations of empires falling to pieces, money in total disarray, dictators and parliamentarians alike nonplussed by the confusion and conflicts that encompass them, and the very weaponry at their disposal so monstrous in its destructiveness as to be unusable except to blow our very earth and all its creatures to smithereens.… Man has decided to abolish himself … himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city tumbling down.

Billy Graham’s closing address, “The King Is Coming,” struck a triumphant note. Reinforcing what Harold John Ockenga has long preached at Park Street Church and at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, Graham drew attention to the fact that God is at work redeeming lost men even while Satan moves them to suicide. The Bible speaks of the “latter rain”: at the end of the age large numbers of people will be saved and the people of God will be revived and refreshed. The stream of unbelief is offset by the stream of redemption. God’s kingdom, now just a beachhead on a hostile shore, will prevail.

Lausanne enjoyed a spiritual unity unknown to the ecumenical movement even in its heyday. This unity was expressed visibly when more than three thousand people sat down at the Lord’s table to eat and drink in remembrance of his death and in anticipation of his coming. Never has the World Council of Churches been able to express a unity like this, a gathering at one table of believers from many diverse denominations. This observance followed a very moving sermon by Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere on the Cross of Jesus Christ. On the previous evening Edward Hill, a black Baptist pastor from Los Angeles, had spoken on the power of God—a power that gives unity. This power was very evident at the communion table on the closing day.

Religion reporter Richard Ostling and religion editor Mayo Mohs of Time magazine caught the fuller meaning of Lausanne. The Time report described Lausanne as a challenge to the World Council of Churches, and the Continuing Committee as the beginning of a new movement away from the ecumenical point of view.

The Lausanne Covenant, signed by more than two thousand people—and more signatures are coming in all the time—makes it plain that God is doing a new thing. He is cutting across the old channels and breaking open a new channel for the evangelization of the world.

By and large, the participants at Lausanne want a fellowship of true believers created as an instrument for world evangelization. But they do not want an ecclesiastical machine or hierarchical structures. Their most recent experiences of these have soured them on the idea.

Lausanne reached a new high in evangelical cooperation. Whether this spirit will last depends upon the continuing fellowship yet to be created and upon the willingness of evangelicals around the world to rally around the flag that Lausanne raised. If God is in it, as most of the participants believed, it will not fail. The Gospel may yet be preached to all the world for a witness in this generation—and then the King will come!

One Man’s Furrow

On a November Monday in 1949 thirty-one-year-old Billy Graham and his wife Ruth boarded a train in Los Angeles. He was exhausted yet thrilled. An evangelistic campaign in a tent had extended from three weeks to eight. An unbelievably large crowd of more than 9,000 had attended the final night. And the national press had actually made front-page news of Christian evangelism.

The train conductor, to the Grahams’ surprise, treated him as a celebrity. At Kansas City reporters badgered him. At Minneapolis he found a hero’s welcome. Only then did the Grahams realize that Billy had catapulted into fame. And he wrote: “I feel so undeserving of all the Spirit has done, because the work has been God’s, not man’s. I want no credit or glory. I want the Lord Jesus to have it all.”

In the quarter-century since, Billy Graham has preached to far more people than any other man in history. His eight-week total of hearers in Los Angeles in 1949 is only a fraction of some of his single face-to-face audiences today, while his message reaches far beyond by television and radio. More than a million persons have come forward at Billy Graham crusades in all parts of the world, and the documentary evidence is overwhelming that a very sizable proportion have made lasting decisions. Without doubt he has increased the population of the Kingdom by hundreds of thousands of souls: “Yet not I, but Christ.”

That first extraordinary response at Los Angeles brought new hope as Americans found afresh that the great truths of the Christian Gospel had power to transform lives not merely by ones or twos but by hundreds—and later by thousands. Nobody can fully explain why one man, however dedicated and disciplined, should suddenly achieve on a large scale what others had been doing in small ways for decades past. One of his team put it well during the Boston awakening in January, 1950: “It was the sovereignty of God in answer to the prayers of all these people.”

Graham’s thirty years of preparation had been hard, from the Carolina dairy farm to the presidency of a Midwest college. The “country boy” image given by the press had never been wholly correct; if it had, the swift rise in the early 1950s to a measure of national fame and influence might have toppled Billy Graham, as cynical commentators expected. Even allowing for the vital factor of the hand of Providence, it is a wonder more mistakes or misjudgments did not occur. Graham and the team were preserved by their complete sincerity, by their roots in devotional life, and by Graham’s firm grasp of the basic truths of the faith.

Graham has always emphasized that his is a team ministry. Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea had joined before Los Angeles and so had Grady Wilson. George M. Wilson (no relation) organized the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to meet the expanding opportunities. As the ministry grew, the team grew. Graham could pick the right man. In those early days each crusade seemed to add someone. Willis Haymaker, the veteran Carolinian who organized the Colombia crusade in 1950, thereafter joined the team and taught them much about preparation and mobilizing lay workers and prayer. And at Shreveport in 1951 Graham brought in Dawson Trotman, founder of Navigators, to fashion a way by which those coming forward could be more adequately helped and followed up and turned over to the pastoral care of the churches. The early, somewhat haphazard methods gradually developed into the Schools of Discipleship, which have perhaps done more than any other feature to foster local evangelism.

As the numbers attending the crusades and making decisions increased, Graham refused paths that might have led to a personal following. The team members are the servants of the churches—in the Apostle Paul’s words, “your servants for Jesus’ sake.” In consequence the Billy Graham crusades have brought the churches into the sowing and reaping of evangelism on a scale never previously seen, not even in the greatest days of D. L. Moody.

Graham broke into the printed word with his best-selling Peace With God (1953) and his daily syndicated column, “My Answer.” And into films, with Mr. Texas. Graham books and films have had immense influence over the past quarter-century. Yet an equally important opening was not obvious immediately. It took persistent effort by Walter Bennett and Ted Dienert before the evangelist dared to launch his weekly radio “Hour of Decision.”

The year 1954 lifted the Billy Graham ministry to a new level through the historic events of Harringay Arena. Few who lived in England at that time can forget the atmosphere that came over the land. The Greater London crusade opened under suspicion and opposed by the press. It ended three months later with Graham flanked by the archbishop of Canterbury and the lord mayor of London in the largest outdoor stadium, as he preached the same unaffected gospel message. The response of England to this hitherto unknown American was beautifully summed up by a greatly loved national figure (whose name still may not be revealed) in a private letter thanking Billy Graham for “the spiritual rekindling you have brought to numberless Englishmen and women whose faith has been made to glow anew by your addresses.”

Graham was flooded with requests that he stay on. Britain was hungry for the Gospel of Christ. He now believes he should have stayed that summer of 1954. Undoubtedly Harringay, and the All Scotland Crusade the following year, and the landline relays and the great Good Friday nationwide television broadcast, gave British Christianity a new impetus throughout the later 1950s. Too many churches, however, held back, debating the pros and cons of this evangelism instead of recognizing their own opportunity. Had they grasped it, the sixties might have been as different for Britain nationally, despite the flooding in of secularism, as they were for the thousands who through the crusades of 1954–5 found faith or vocation (the number of ordinands and missionary recruits shot up in the years following Harringay and Kelvin Hall).

Billy Graham was now one of the most famous people on earth. Whether he preached under the starlight in South India by interpretation to huge, attentive crowds, or in the pulpit of the University Church in Cambridge, England, or for sixteen weeks in the sticky heat of the old Madison Square Garden in New York, ordinary people found themselves understanding the issues of commitment to Christ. Theologians might debate the crusades, sociologists might analyze them, but Graham reached the masses, and hundreds discovered that Christ is alive.

The tally of converts was not the only important yield. The Christian community was strengthened and united by the experience of the thousands (including Roman Catholics in the later crusades) who attended Schools of Discipleship and who worked and prayed together for the various crusades and their follow-up. Graham taught them to think big, to expect great things for God. He taught that efficiency and mobilization can march with spirituality. He could not have done it alone; he is the first to emphasize this. But in the wisdom and grace of God, Graham is the focus. I recall a little incident in a BGEA office when I wanted something to be taken downtown. A youth arrived at my desk and announced: “I run errands for Billy Graham!” Graham was a thousand miles away, and probably they had never conversed; but the boy felt he worked for Billy Graham, not for an organization, and through Graham for their mutual Lord and Friend.

If the Graham team was a vehicle of blessing to a land or region, each land contributed to the team’s collective skill and understanding. Thus the British introduced the landline relays and Operation Andrew, which ensured that very many of those attending would come in the company of friends who had already found the Lord Jesus. The ideas of one country would be used in the next and absorbed into the general pattern of future crusades.

The year 1959 made a fitting tenth anniversary, being the year of the first Australian and New Zealand crusades. Graham’s impact on the churches of Australia is a matter of history.

The 1960s widened and deepened the Graham ministry. He had been one of the founders of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, which from the start was entirely independent. To complement its theological and scholarly approach he now founded Decision, his own devotional magazine. Without advertising revenue, which is supposed to be an economic necessity for periodicals, its circulation climbed in the next thirteen years past the five million mark, far beyond that of any other religious magazine, with several foreign-language editions. As a by-product Decision produced the Schools of Christian Writing.

These years saw also the vast increase of the television ministry, the means of Graham’s greatest single impact on his own country. When the videotapes of crusades are shown from coast to coast, hundreds of thousands of letters bring evidence of the power of Christ’s message to modern man.

Schools of Evangelism were yet another product of the sixties. Each crusade since 1961 has included a seminar course for which many experienced ministers, seminarians, and laymen have been grateful. In a country like Japan where Christians are in a minority, the School of Evangelism is particularly important.

From Tokyo in 1968 Graham went to Australia in 1969, where many converts of ’59 served as counselors; and then to New York again, in the new Madison Square Garden, with the crusade shown later each night on television all down the Eastern seaboard. The crusade penetrated the city. I recall the intent faces in New York, of all types and ages, and the variety of the nightly crowds who came reverently forward. That autumn Billy returned to southern California for his third crusade in Los Angeles and its neighborhood.

Japan, New York, California; then the European television crusade of 1970, which linked thirty-six cities in ten countries with Graham preaching in Dortmund; then Nagaland in 1972. This sequence shows a remarkable and incontestable feature of the man: his ability to reach all cultures and ages. The historian who writes the definitive biography long after we all are dead will thoroughly attest this reach of Graham’s voice, exploding the suggestion one hears from time to time that Graham’s message is only for those who already accept his basic beliefs or were bred in the same culture. The documentary evidence to the contrary is irrefutable: Graham’s sermons may be decisive in any culture, can be appreciated by the thoughtful yet digested by the simple.

His preaching has come a long way since the youthful evangelist’s sermons of 1949. Yet Billy Graham retains the ear of youth; he adapts his style to changing trends without altering his message. The early 1970s were marked by youth training congresses, such as Campus Crusade’s Explo at Dallas, at which Billy Graham gave the main addresses, and the SPREE (Spiritual ReEmphasis) campaign in London in 1973, organized by his own men. This attracted criticism from British churches, partly for being hurriedly arranged, but the haste was dictated largely by the imminent closing, for reconstruction, of Earls Court which was the only suitable place. SPREE encouraged many in effective discipleship.

At the opposite end of the scale, Graham has long had the ear of businessmen, legislators, and community leaders, and like the Apostle Paul he “bears my name before kings.” This friendship with heads of state is costly.

Whether conversing in the privacy of a palace, or addressing an open-air congregation of a million as at Seoul in Korea in 1973, Billy Graham stands as a minister and a witness of the Risen Lord Jesus. The sheer magnitude of his achievement over the years has shown the continuing ability of the biblical Gospel to confront radical theologies, encourage ordinary believers, and bring men out of violence and anarchy and atheism into the light of the Kingdom of Christ.

Graham in his mid-fifties holds shorter and fewer crusades than those of ten or fifteen years earlier, but his dozen associate evangelists are in demand for numerous crusades in North America and around the world. As members of Billy Graham’s team, with the resources and experience of his association in support, they can do more than on their own. And they in their turn have contributed: Leighton Ford, for example, with his appeal to intellectuals and his strong social consciousness, has given sharper points to the intellectual and social thrusts that have long been part of the Graham armory.

It would be daunting to attempt an estimate of the impact, in any single week of 1974, of the ministries that stem directly from Billy Graham, as men and women throughout the world are drawn to think about Christ while they read, or listen, or watch television or a film, or are in some way preparing, praying for, attending, or following up a crusade. Nor can his indirect ministries be listed—the Christian endeavors started by converts since 1949, the opportunities seized because of his encouragement and example.

Graham’s place in history will be ensured not only by the significance of his crusades but also by God’s use of him to enlarge the horizons and deepen the devotion of men who are already Christian leaders in their own right. Therefore it is fitting that the year of his silver jubilee should be marked also by the recent International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne, which built upon the World Congress on Evangelism held at Berlin in 1966 and its regional sequels in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. These arose as much from the climate generated by the crusades as from Graham’s leadership and the priorities he has emphasized.

And what he said to a skeptical press before Harringay twenty years ago may surely be quoted in this anniversary year as Billy Graham’s own aim for the years to come: “I am going to present a God who matters, and who makes claims on the human race. He is a God of love, grace and mercy, but also a God of judgment. When we break his moral laws we suffer; when we keep them we have inward peace and joy.… I am calling for a revival that will cause men and women to return to their offices and shops to live out the teaching of Christ in their daily relationships. I am going to preach a gospel not of despair but of hope—hope for the individual, for society and for the world.”

Why Lausanne?

In the eight years since the World Congress on Evangelism met in Berlin, tremendous developments have been taking place in the religious world. We are all aware of the startling changes in the Roman Catholic world. I also detect a wistful longing on the part of a small but growing number of ecumenical leaders for a greater emphasis on orthodox biblical theology and a re-evaluation of some of the pronouncements in theological, sociological, and political areas. Then there has been also the phenomenal development of the charismatic movement.

God is at work in a remarkable way. Never have so many people been so open to the Gospel. In parts of Asia, there are evidences of the outpouring of God’s Spirit in evangelism. In Korea, the churches are increasing four times faster than the population. In certain parts of northeast India, Christians now form a majority of the population and are bringing about a whole new dimension of civic righteousness. In Papua, New Guinea, a land where the Gospel was virtually unknown before this generation, a large percentage of the people now profess faith in Christ. Latin Americans are responding to the Gospel in unprecedented numbers, and evangelical churches in many parts of Latin America are multiplying vigorously.

In North America, especially the United States, there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in the Gospel in the last decade—especially among youth. It is true that old denominations with theologically liberal tendencies are declining; yet the more evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination) are showing a steady growth. Similarly the evangelical theological seminaries and Bible schools are overflowing while the more liberal schools are seeing a dramatic drop in enrollment. Scores of para-church evangelistic organizations are flourishing as never before.

In 1945, Christians in Africa numbered about twenty million. Today they number at least seventy million. Africa, south of the Sahara, could become substantially Christian by the end of the century, in spite of many dangers, obstacles, and even persecutions in some areas.

Europe, which has contributed so much to the evangelization of the world in centuries past, is very difficult to evaluate. I have held almost as many crusades in Europe as in America. During the crusade called Euro 70, four years ago, we connected thirty-seven cities by closed-circuit television. In many areas there was an overwhelming response to the Gospel. Next year, thousands of Christian young people will be gathering in Brussels for “Eurofest.” In both Eastern and Western Europe there are thousands of dedicated, committed believers. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the people of Europe never attend church.

A Danish clergyman recently said, “Europe is one vast mission field.” But there are encouraging signs almost everywhere that God is at work here also.

In the Eastern socialist world there are evidences of a quiet but real work of the Spirit. In one country, the Baptists, for example, have doubled in numbers in the last decade. Belief in God is indestructible; even in the Soviet Union, among workers and intellectuals alike, there is a growing awareness of God. One reporter states that East European students are looking wistfully over their shoulder to Moses and to Christ for a reason to live.

In these days, God is giving his people an opportunity for world-wide witness—perhaps a last chance!

But there are also many dangers. As we meet here, world problems press upon us. Inflation is sweeping the world, but even worse, the world stands on the very brink of famine. Droughts, floods, and other calamities have destroyed or drastically diminished grain stocks not only in Africa but also in the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

We are seeing a dramatic shift in the world monetary situation. In ten years the Middle Eastern oil-producing countries will totally dominate the international monetary market. A Lebanese banker estimates that by 1980 these Middle Eastern countries will have nearly two-thirds of all the monetary reserves in the world.

The wealth of the West accumulated since World War II is draining away. The European Common Market will have a balance-of-payments deficit of about $35 billion this year alone, and this is only the beginning. All of this will most certainly affect those missionary agencies that depend on financial support in the West.

Many people have a mood of deep pessimism. Men’s hearts are indeed failing them for fear as our Lord predicted. Absence of a fear of God, loss of moral absolutes, sin accepted and glorified, breakdown in the home, disregard for authority, lawlessness, anxiety, hatred, and despair—these are signs of a culture in decay.

In the West we are witnessing societies in trauma, shaken by war, scandals, and inflation, surfeited and bored with materialism, turned off by lifeless religion, turning to the occult, with its Satan worship, mind control, astrology, and various ploys of the devil to lure men to turn from the truth. We read about whole villages in the Soviet Union dominated by witches.

Most of us hold the view of Scripture that teaches that as we approach the end of history things will get worse. Our Lord predicted in Matthew 24 that false prophets, earthquakes, famines, wars, betrayals, moral permissiveness, persecution, and apostasy would precede his return.

We know that the whole world will not be converted to Christ, and that the whole world is not going to become permanently peaceful, but our Lord did promise: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

Sixty-four years ago, the delegates to the historic Edinburgh conference left Edinburgh with an overwhelming optimism about the future of evangelism, missions, and their impact on what was already being called “the Christian century.” They never dreamed they were less than four years from the devastation of World War I and only thirty years away from World War II.

But we here at this congress have an unparalleled opportunity, for our world may be standing at the very brink of Armageddon. Four basic presuppositions should undergird our labors here.

First, this congress stands in the tradition of many movements of evangelism throughout the history of the Church.

From the time of the early apostles to the present, evangelism has been the lifeblood of the Church. When the Spirit fell on the Church at Pentecost, 120 believers soon became 3,000. The 3,000 soon multiplied to 5,000. And so the fire of Christ spread throughout the Roman Empire to Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, into India, and to the islands of the sea.

This congress is the most recent link in a long chain of evangelism conferences stretching back into the last century, which Latourette called “the great century of missionary advance.” At that time, sparked by thousands of young people, the Student Volunteer Movement set as its goal “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” It is one of the tragedies of the missionary movement that today, over sixty years after Edinburgh, many Christians not only doubt that the goal is possible but even question whether it is desirable.

Dr. Arthur Johnson has done considerable research in this area and I, along with him, have asked two questions. First: What characterized the great missionary and evangelistic movements of the last century? Second: How have these movements lost their zeal for evangelism?

The missionary and evangelistic movements of the last century were based on the authority of the Scriptures as the Word of God. Because these people were biblically oriented, they had a definite view of salvation. They took seriously what the Bible says about man’s lostness and his need for redemption. They also believed strongly in “conversion,” convinced that by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, men could be forgiven and changed. They believed that evangelism is not an option but an imperative. They were convinced that the primary mission of the Church is to declare the Good News of Jesus Christ.

But somehow, as time went on, many of these movements lost their zeal. Why?

Evangelism always faces two dangers. First, there are external barriers to effective evangelism in our generation. But true evangelism thrives on dangers. I believe a greater danger comes from within missionary and evangelistic agencies.

The reason that the great missionary movements of the nineteenth century were able to make a lasting impact on the world was that internally they were strong. They knew what they believed and they were determined to proclaim it to the world. But they gradually lost their strength. How?

In the nineteenth century there was little disagreement about “the message” of evangelism. Holding to a high view of Scripture, Christians preached the unique Gospel of Christ to a lost humanity. In a series of conferences not unlike this one Christians sought to examine and reaffirm the evangelistic task of the Church.

One of those important conferences, was convened in New York in 1900. At that conference John R. Mott, who has been called the architect of the ecumenical movement, saw in the command of Christ the responsibility of each generation to preach Christ to its own known and accessible world. The spoken message was to be supported by education, literacy programs, and medicine. “The goal of the church,” he said, “was the conversion of souls and the edification of the infant churches.”

Ten years later, the historic Edinburgh conference on evangelism and missions was held. But something happened after Edinburgh in 1910. A small disturbance became a cyclone that swept the world.

Even before Edinburgh, theological changes were subtly infiltrating Christian youth movements, causing some to weaken their ties to orthodox faith. The authority of evangelism began to shift from the Scriptures to the Church. They focused attention on salvation of the community rather than the individual. This became known as the social gospel. Emphasis turned to man in this world, rather than in this and the next world.

Since then the world church has floundered. It has lost much of the vision and zeal of those days, for three primary reasons:

1. Loss of the authority of the message of the Gospel.

2. Preoccupation with social and political problems.

3. Preoccupation with organizational unity.

From the 1910 conference in Edinburgh came two major streams of the modern missionary movement: the evangelical, and what might be termed the ecumenical.

In one important respect, however, New York and Edinburgh were prototypes of this 1974 Congress on World Evangelization. The delegates to New York and Edinburgh were chosen very largely from leaders in evangelism and mission. Leaders of churches were not, in that capacity, predominant there. Hence participants could singlemindedly consider world evangelization rather than “everything” the Church ought to do.

The succeeding world gatherings at Jerusalem, Tambaram, Mexico City, and Bangkok were made up not only of evangelists and missionaries but more and more of eminent leaders of the churches, who were there in their capacity as churchmen, not as evangelists or missionaries. Delegates of the young churches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were asking primarily at these conferences, “How can the missionary movement help us in our social and political problems?”

The delegates did not always faithfully represent their constituents; the majority at home was far more evangelically oriented. But the spotlight gradually shifted from evangelism to social and political action. Finally mission guidelines were drawn up which called almost entirely for the reconciliation of man with man, rather than of man with God.

This is a conference on world evangelization. We are enthusiastic about all the many things churches properly do, from worship to social concern. But our calling is to a specific sector of the Church’s responsibility: evangelism. We believe our point of view has not been adequately represented at some of the other world church gatherings. Therefore, we have gathered here to pray, talk, plan, and please God, advance the work of evangelism.

Second, this congress convenes as one body, obeying one Lord, facing one world, with one task.

The following words to the Ephesians could have been written specifically for the Congress on World Evangelization:

In Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; … for through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone [Eph. 2:13, 14, 18–20].

This congress should not stress older and younger churches. We see the Church as one. We come to the task of evangelism as one body, one company of the redeemed, proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever our cultural, racial, or linguistic background, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Certainly we have some doctrinal differences, some cultural and political differences. But we are one in the Spirit. We shout with one voice, “Jesus alone saves!”

We have one task—to proclaim the message of salvation in Jesus Christ. In rich countries and in poor, among the educated and uneducated, in freedom or oppression, we are determined to proclaim Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that men may put their trust in him as Saviour, follow him obediently, and serve him in the fellowship of the Church, of which he alone is King and Head.

Third, this congress convenes to re-emphasize those biblical concepts which are essential to evangelism.

There are at least five of these concepts that both the evangelical and the nonevangelical world have been studying and debating during the past few years. Each has been drastically reinterpreted or diluted in some parts of the organized church. Each, reexamined in the light of our times, must be reaffirmed by those committed to biblical evangelism.

First, we are committed to the authority of Scripture. We hold that the entire Bible is the infallible Word of God. Many years ago I had to accept this position by faith. Even though I myself cannot understand it all, the Bible is taken by the Holy Spirit and made inerrant to my spirit. It is an “everlasting body of revealed truth” that is authoritative, and it demands faith and obedience. If there is one thing that the history of the Church should teach us, it is the importance of a theology of evangelism derived from the Scriptures.

A second concept we expect to reaffirm is the “lostness” of man apart from Jesus Christ.

The Bible portrays man as originally created by God for fellowship with him. However, sin intervened in the Garden of Eden. Man is now born alienated from God. Without Jesus Christ he is lost and without hope in this world or the next.

Notice the terms Jesus used to describe the state of the lost: “a place of wailing,” “a place of weeping,” “a furnace of fire,” “a place of torment,” “a place of outer darkness,” “a place of everlasting punishment,” “a place prepared for the devil and his angels.” Our Lord further said, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).

Many years ago, a man in England on his way to the gallows was being warned by the Anglican chaplain of the “wrath to come” unless he repented. He turned to the chaplain and said, “If I believed the way you believe, I would crawl across England on broken glass to warn people.”

My fellow evangelists and missionaries, if men are lost, as Jesus clearly taught they are, then we have no greater priority than to lift up a saving Christ to them.

Third, we expect to reaffirm at this conference that “salvation” is in Jesus Christ alone.

There is a narrowness to the Gospel that is unpopular with the world. The early apostles declared, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

But there has been a steady erosion of belief in this clear scriptural teaching. Some have openly taught that there are many ways to God, and that ultimately no one is lost. The vast permissiveness of our day has left its stain on the Church. Not Christ the One Way according to God’s revelation, but many ways according to one’s culture and inclination. To this, evangelicals must return a resounding NO.

When Sadhu Sundar Singh was asked what the Christian faith had to offer India that the other religions of India did not already possess, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation, “Jesus Christ.”

Fourth, at this congress we expect to reaffirm that our witness must be by both word and deed.

We cannot separate the two. Our lives, both individually and collectively, must reflect clearly the truths we proclaim. Faith without works is dead. The source of salvation is grace. The ground of our salvation is the Atonement. The means of our salvation is faith. The evidence of salvation is works.

Historically, evangelicals have influenced men everywhere in the battle against slavery and in the quest for social justice. We should be proud of this tradition. At the same time we must squarely face the challenges of our own age. We must be sensitive to human need wherever it is found. We must confess that we have not always been true to our tradition. At times we have not been consistent, or we have failed to appreciate the implications of the truths we have proclaimed.

It seems to me that we are always in danger of falling into errors on social action. The first is to deny that we have any social responsibility as Christians. Scripture calls us time and again to do all in our power to alleviate human suffering and to correct injustice.

The second error is to let social concern become our all-consuming mission. Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What if we developed a materialistic utopia (which sinful man never will) in which every inhabitant of the planet was fed, clothed, housed, and cared for in every way? Without God, man would not find the purpose, the happiness, the peace, and the joy that his heart craves.

In his play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre fancies everybody getting in a room and having everything that should satisfy modern man, such as sex, food, drink, drugs, money, pleasure, entertainment—but nothing satisfies. Sartre has no answer. He suggests that life has no significance, coherence, integrity, or meaning, and that there is no way out, no exit.

Some of the unhappiest people I know are millionaires. Without a personal relationship with Christ, man is “lost” in this world and the next. Man is a spiritual being, never satisfied or “fulfilled” until his soul is at peace with God.

A third error is to identify the Gospel with any one particular political system or culture. This has been my own danger. When I go to preach the Gospel, I go as an ambassador for the Kingdom of God—not America. To tie the Gospel to any political system, secular program, or society is wrong and will only serve to divert the Gospel. The Gospel transcends the goals and methods of any political system or any society, however good it may be.

Perhaps there is a fourth danger for us, that of trying to make all Christians act alike, regardless of where God may have placed them. Some of you, by the nature of your societies, are able to have a fair degree of influence. Others of you come from countries in which this is very difficult. We should each recognize one another’s problems and opportunities. The social, cultural, and political problems are totally different for a Christian in Uganda and one in Great Britain, or for one in Australia and one in Czechoslovakia. But thank God our spiritual resources are the same.

These four things all point to the last concept which we must reaffirm at this congress: The necessity of evangelism.

In certain circles today, evangelism is spoken of only as the “Christian presence.” Emphasis is placed on living a consistently moral life in one’s environment. This is as it should be, it is good; but I maintain that evangelism is much more than non-verbal witness. Humanists may heal, feed, and help, but this social presence isn’t gospel proclamation.

The Gospel is an announcement of the Good News. But what Good News? It is the thrilling proclamation that Jesus Christ, very God and very man, died for my sins on the cross, was buried, and rose the third day. The Son has made full atonement for my sins. If I reach forth by faith to receive Christ as my personal Saviour, I am declared forgiven by God, not through any merit of mine but through the merits of Christ’s shed blood. I rejoice in pardon for the past, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit for the present, and the living hope for the future. The great philosophical questions concerning where I came from, why I am here, and where I am going are answered, and in grateful obedience I should live a life “rich in good works.”

Evangelism has been reinterpreted in some circles to mean primarily “changing the structures of society in the direction of justice, righteousness, and peace.” Industrial evangelism, for example, is held to be not bringing workers to redemptive faith in Jesus Christ but improving the conditions under which men work.

Don’t get me wrong. Improving working conditions is something each individual believer should be concerned about. But this is not primarily “evangelism.” Evangelicals should reject all such devaluation of the meaning of the “Evangel.”

I believe in political freedom, the changing of unjust political and social structures where needed, and where possible equal justice for all. But working for these is not strictly “evangelism,” though these benefits have often historically come as the fruit of missions and evangelism.

In the early part of this century, Robert E. Speer, one of the key figures in the beginnings of the ecumenical movement, gave an address entitled “The Supreme and Determining Aim.” In it he said:

We must not confuse the aim of foreign missions with the results of foreign missions.… Where the Gospel goes it plants in the hearts of men forces that produce new lives; it plants among communities of men forces that create new social combinations. It is impossible that any human tyranny should live where Jesus Christ is King.… It is a dangerous thing to charge ourselves openly before the world with the aim of reorganizing States and reconstructing society.… Missions are powerful to transform the face of society, because they ignore the face of society and deal with it at its heart.

We may not agree with all of this statement, yet the basic truth is there.

Biblically, evangelism can mean nothing else than proclaiming Jesus Christ by presence, by word, and by trusting the Holy Spirit to use the Scriptures to persuade men to become his disciples and responsible members of his Church.

Furthermore, evangelism and the salvation of souls is the vital mission of the Church. The whole Church must be mobilized to bring the whole Gospel to the whole world. That is our order. Therefore while we may discuss social and political problems, our priority for discussion here is the salvation of souls.

Christians must regain the sense of direction, the feeling of urgency, and the depth of conviction which gave birth to the powerful slogan, “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation.”

We live in different days from those of the nineteenth century. And new days demand new methods. Our evangelistic methods differ in many ways from those of D. L. Moody. Even at this hour, there are scores of different methods of evangelism being effectively used. The method we use may be among the least effective.

Fourth, this congress convenes to consider honestly and carefully both the unevangelized world and the Church’s resources to evangelize the world.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the unevangelized world consists of two main blocs of people. First, there are the superficially Christian populations. If you ask them their religion, they more than likely reply “Christian,” but they do not personally know Christ. Second, the unevangelized world consists also of large “unreached” populations which can be found in almost every country. For example, the Turks, the Algerians, and the Vietnamese in Europe are large unreached populations.

Tens of millions live in areas that never hear the Gospel. Some countries of the world are almost completely closed to the Gospel except by radio. We should give a great deal of thought and prayer to ways and means of reaching these lost millions. In these unreached populations, Christians of any sort, “born again” or in name only, constitute only a tiny fraction—sometimes one in a hundred, often one in a thousand. The magnitude of the unreached populations on every continent is shocking.

While some people can be evangelized by their neighbors, other and greater multitudes are cut off from their Christian neighbors by deep linguistic, political, and cultural chasms. They will never be reached by “near neighbor” evangelism. To build our evangelistic policies on “near neighbor” evangelism alone is to shut out at least a billion from any possibility of knowing the Saviour.

Churches of every land, therefore, must deliberately send out evangelists and missionaries to master other languages, learn other cultures, live in them perhaps for life, and evangelize these multitudes. We should reject the idea of a moratorium on the sending of missionaries.

Many sincere Christians around the world are concerned for evangelism. They are diligent at evangelizing in their own communities and even in their own countries. But they do not see God’s big picture and the global responsibility he has put upon the Church in his Word. The Christians in Zaire are not just to evangelize Zaire, nor the Christians in Peru just the people of Peru. God’s heartbeat is for the world. Christ commissioned us not only to make disciples in every nation, but to preach the Gospel to every creature.

When Wesley was shut off from the established church of his day, he proclaimed, “The world will be my parish,” and he kept a map of the world before him. Carey put up a map of the world in his shoe shop.

When I see the world from the moon on television,

I want to reach out and grab it for Christ. As Isaiah said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isa. 45:22).

World evangelism means sending more missionaries and evangelists from every church in every land to the unreached billions. The Church must learn to utilize every technological and spiritual resource at its command.

Finally, what do we hope will be accomplished, at this congress? Let me share four of my hopes with you.

1. I would like to see the congress frame a biblical declaration on evangelism. The time has come again for the evangelical world to assert with a strong clear voice the biblical definition of evangelism. And I would challenge the World Council of Churches’ 1975 Assembly to study such a statement carefully and prayerfully with the idea of adopting more evangelical concepts of evangelism and missions.

2. I would like to see the Church challenged to complete the task of world evangelism. Never has the Church been stronger, more deeply entrenched in more countries, more truly a world church, and more able to evangelize than it is today. The world population by the end of this century, at the present rate of increase, will be seven billion. But never have the tools of evangelization been sharper. And we have the manpower in the thousands of keen young Christians God has been calling to himself in recent years. The time has come for action!

3. I trust we can state what the relation is between evangelism and social responsibility. Let us rejoice in social action, and yet insist that it alone is not evangelism, and cannot be substituted for evangelism.

4. I hope that a new “koinonia” or fellowship among evangelicals of all persuasions will be developed throughout the world. I hope there will develop here what we might call “The Spirit of Lausanne.” The time has come for evangelicals to move forward, to encourage, challenge, and bring hope to the world church.

Evangelicals are rapidly gaining recognition and momentum! From this congress can come a new love, a new fellowship, a new slogan, and a new song, but most of all a new commitment. I believe the Lord is saying to us, “Let’s go forward together in a worldwide fellowship in evangelism, in missions, in Bible translation, in literature distribution, in meeting world social needs, in evangelical theological training and in other areas.”

There are two basic needs if we are to leave with the Spirit of Lausanne.

The first has to do with prayer. For the ten days prior to Pentecost, the disciples “continued with one accord in prayer and supplications.” Their prayers were heard. The Spirit descended. The power abounded. Weak men became strong, faithless men became faithful, speechless men spoke the Word with strength, and, most glorious of all, sinners who listened became saints through faith in the risen Christ. It is my hope that there will be a tremendous emphasis on prayer during this congress. Evangelism is always in danger of succumbing to a humanistic activity. With all the emphasis on crowds and our excitement about church growth, we should remember that Jesus sometimes fled from the crowds.

In discussions of evangelism, too little is often made of the spiritual life and prayer. It is foolish and vain to try to do God’s work without God’s power. And there is no way for Christians to have God’s power except by prayer. I have learned from many years of evangelistic experience that successful evangelism, whatever method may be used, must be saturated in prayer.

The second need is to leave the congress filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Only a Spirit-filled people can finish the job of world evangelization.

We will be here for ten days, even as the disciples of our Lord tarried for ten days before Pentecost. They did this in obedience to the command of Jesus, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). The power they needed is the power we need. There can be no adequate evangelism without the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment. It is the Holy Spirit who performs the work of regeneration. It is the Holy Spirit who indwells believers. It is the Holy Spirit who guides, teaches, instructs, and fills the new believer.

The great communicator of the Gospel is the Holy Spirit. He uses ordinary people such as us as instruments—but it is his work! Therefore, when the Gospel is faithfully declared, it is the Holy Spirit who sends it like a fiery dart into the hearts of those who have been prepared. I hope that during this congress there will be a constant recognition of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in evangelism.

God has gathered us here at a time of great opportunity, but also at a time of unprecedented danger. Satan is marshalling his forces for his fiercest attack in history. He will do everything he can to discourage, divide, and defeat us as we seek to carry out the Great Commission of our Lord. But we follow the Son of God, who has already nullified the power of death, hell, and Satan. The final victory is certain.

The night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke in Memphis about how he had climbed the mountain. When he had scaled the heights of the mountain he said that he was able to look over into the Promised Land. He said, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

You and I have climbed the mountain that separated us from the Living God. We have scaled its heights. We have looked into the Promised Land. Our eyes have seen the glory of God. He has given us the vision to see, the faith to believe, and the courage to act. But we have not yet entered the Promised Land.

Down below us on the plains of the world are the millions of men and women who do not know that there is a mountain to climb, a Promised Land to enter. They have not seen, believed, or acted. We who have seen the Promised Land must go down into the valley when Lausanne is over to tell the multitudes there is a mountain to climb, and a Promised Land to enter.

God has cut the pathway to the top of that mountain with the blood of his Son. And to us has been given the task and the privilege of telling all men everywhere that if they follow the blood-stained trail of the Son of God, they will climb the mountain, they will see the Promised Land, and they will know the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Why Lausanne?

That the earth may hear His voice!

Editor’s Note from September 13, 1974

In this issue we honor Billy Graham, who this month is celebrating his twenty-fifth year in mass evangelism. The glossy-stock photograph of Mr. Graham (see the insert facing page 14) taken by the famous photographer Yousuf Karsh has never been published before. We congratulate Graham and his team for their evangelistic outreach and offer our good wishes and prayers for the upcoming Hollywood Bowl Crusade (September 19–21) and for the Rio de Janeiro rally (October 2–6), which is likely to be the largest yet.

The fund used to provide subscriptions to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for deserving people at home and abroad who cannot afford the subscription price is exhausted. We can easily use $4–5,000. Perhaps some of our readers will feel led to contribute to this ministry. All gifts are tax-deductible.

Friend wife and I will join the Gotaas Mediterranean tour (I will lecture) starting October 24. We hope that among the rewarding experiences of this trip there will be the opportunity to spend time with some of our friends from whom we are separated by distance and whom we long to see again.

Theology

Acceptance: But on What Terms?

It is to be expected that the element of alienation, so prominent in the vocabulary of Western society today, should produce theological shock waves. Alienation has at its core a loss of the sense of belonging, of acceptance. Alienation may, of course, be purely subjective and cultic. At the same time, the feeling of alienation is an empirical datum, one with which all who work with people must come to grips.

The real question for the Christian, and particularly the Christian theologian, is whether alienation may legitimately become a category for determining theological stance. The easy way in evangelism is, of course, to offer to persons who feel set aside in the march of human events an assurance of easy spiritual acceptance. As one has expressed this easy way, the Church should present a “Jesus with no strings attached.”

The issue reaches a crucial stage for evangelicals when one seeks to define the terms upon which men and women are accepted by God. Theologians, particularly those of the liberal persuasion, find themselves tempted here. John B. Cobb, Jr., for instance, seems to see acceptance as the ultimate category governing the rapprochement between the hearts of men and their maker.

In the volume Liberal Christianity at the Crossroads, Professor Cobb has prepared the way for his statements concerning acceptance (Chapter IX) by his earlier observation that belief in a God who is sovereign in the universe is no longer acceptable. This does, of course, condition his soteriology at many points.

In the chapter “The Grace That Justifies” he observes first that “our need for acceptance, if we are to be freed from the pressure to prove or to justify ourselves, is total.” He goes on to observe that “the basic task of the Church is to announce and realize God’s free acceptance,” and adds that the Church “does so by being itself an accepting and affirming community.”

Concerning the source of man’s acceptance, Cobb observes that “it wells up from within him from depths he did not know he had—from the depths where God is.” This is, of course, an echo of Whitehead’s view of the deity, one that is difficult to square with the Christian understanding of things.

This acceptance-theology is not totally new; prior formulations have paved the way for it. These formulations today seem to be implicit in much of theological thinking, though they seldom find explicit expression.

Perhaps the most pervasive of these is that which rests upon Karl Barth’s view of election-reprobation. This “model” is more diffuse than specific, but is certainly “there” in the theological climate of our decade. Whatever may be urged to the contrary, Barth seems to afford a clear rationale for an unconditional (and possibly universal) acceptance of all men. This rests upon his doctrine of God’s “election of Grace.”

In his view, Jesus Christ is the Elect Man, in whom all have been chosen. (His explicit statements at this point may be found in his Church Dogmatics II, 2 and 3, and IV, 2 and 3) Crucial here is Barth’s contention that through Christ’s position as Elect Man, all are entitled to fellowship with the Father, since in Jesus Christ “God elected Himself for rejection, damnation and death.”

Is not this universalism? Can Jesus Christ be the “reprobate man” for all, thus ensuring not only an elect destiny for all men but exemption of all from God’s final negative judgment?

The other question that is not answered here is: To what extent if any is man’s acceptance conditioned by his own response? If our own obedience is virtually accomplished in Him, is there need for any response of repentance, of bearing “fruit that befits repentance,” and of deep personal trust in the merits of a Redeemer? Is Barth correct in thinking that the Reformers erred in their concern with the election and reprobation of individuals, rather than with Jesus Christ as the primary object of the divine election?

To turn to the practical implications of the “acceptance theology,” what is the duty of the Christian community in the proclamation of the Good News? It seems clear from the New Testament that the Church is called to do more than bear witness to the “promise” that all are in reality elected in Christ.

Perhaps it is time for evangelicals to be more articulate at the point of some conditionality in the matter of human salvation. It goes without saying that if salvation is for all an eternal occurrence, then any cooperation by man with God, or meeting of such conditions as repentance, is to be rejected uncompromisingly. If Jesus Christ as the Eternal Son is God’s eternal “Yes” to man, then no individual can effectively say “No.”

It may, further, be high time for evangelicals to recognize that while Barth’s opinions, and others similar to his, have served as a popular and tempting catalyst to the theological world at this point, still the thrust of this emphasis is unbiblical. It goes without saying that the idea of salvation upon the simple basis of unconditional acceptance is in accord with the spirit of the age. But is the Church to be a mere thermometer to register world-temperature? Ought not its role to be more like that of the thermostat, so that it sets the temperature of man’s thinking, particularly at a point as crucial as this?

One dare not minimize the significance of the words of our Lord as he declared himself anointed “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” This lies perennially at the heart of the Gospel. In similar vein Paul declares: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” His appeal swings around the proposition that the death of Christ demands a response of acceptance upon the part of the sinner.

To quote our Lord again: “You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” These words seem to suggest clearly that our acceptance by God requires a disposition of mind to accept the claims of the One who is the life.

Similarly, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God.” It seems supremely difficult, in the light of this clear word, to maintain God’s unconditional acceptance of men and women.

We are not unaware of the easy manner in which the expression “accepting Christ” is used in some circles. Bonhoeffer’s charge of “cheap grace” is not without point in our day. At the same time, a serious reading of the New Testament can scarcely lead to any other conclusion than that repentance, including a determination toward amendment of life, is crucial for our acceptance into the Household of the Redeemer.

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