How unfortunate it is that just when large sections of the world are increasingly receptive to the gospel message the Church is hampered by uncertainty in some quarters over divine authorization for its mission! We are told that it is unethical to subject people of other faiths to Christian propaganda, that the presence of missions is legitimate but their proclamation is not. In other words, to provide an example of Christian life is fine, but to attempt to convert is wrong.

This timid approach gets support from the assertion that the Great Commission did not originate with the risen Lord but was attributed to him by the young Church. After all, the Lord did not write the Gospels. They emerged a generation or so later. We are told that they should be understood primarily to reflect the ideas and practices of the Church, even though they doubtless contain some information about what Jesus said and did.

Transferring the Great Commission from the risen Lord to the Church weakens the commission, even if one acknowledges that the Church was not guilty of wrong-doing in attributing it to him. If the Lord did not voice the Great Commission, the way is open to question the legitimacy of aggressive evangelism. But if the commission does indeed go back to Christ, then on the basis of his universal authority he not only advocated but commanded a ministry of verbal witness to those who already had a faith of some kind. The Jews were committed to monotheism, as were the Samaritans, and the pagan world had gods aplenty.

The storm center of the debate is Matthew 28:18–20. Here the going forth to win all nations is said to have three elements: making disciples, baptizing them, and instructing them in the commandments of the Lord Jesus. The first item covers conversion, the second baptism (which implies conversion and denotes incorporation into the life and fellowship of the triune God), and the third the regulating and maturing of Christian life.

The Command To Evangelize

Our first task is to try to determine whether the Lord actually spoke the words about discipling the nations. By his own admission he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24). In keeping with this limitation, when he sent out his disciples to preach and to heal during his own ministry he warned them against going to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans, charging them to restrict their work to Israel (Matt. 10:5, 6). At first glance, then, it may seem strange that in his final instructions he should set aside this restriction and command a ministry to all the nations.

But close examination reveals that it is not strange at all. Are we really prepared to believe that the Lord who showed such concern for Israel that he sent out his disciples to minister to the needs of the people (Matt. 10) felt so little concern for the world beyond that even after he had accomplished redemption for all mankind he failed to send the same men forth on a larger mission by an express command?

Even when he was concentrating on his own people, Jesus had repeatedly shown an interest in non-Israelites—healing the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5–13), responding to the plea of the Canaanite woman for help (Matt. 15:21–28), predicting the dissemination of the Gospel to all nations throughout the world (Matt. 24:14; 26:13). But until his own nation had officially rejected him and until the basis for a worldwide proclamation of the Gospel had been laid in his death for all men and in his resurrection, concern for other nations had to be held in check. The enlargement of the scope of the disciples’ operations after the resurrection is strictly in keeping with the mind of Christ.

Though Jesus had been reared in Galilee and during his ministry had spent most of his time there, he had avoided its Hellenistic areas. But now that his mission was completed and full redemption was accomplished, what was more fitting than his selection of Galilee as the locale for prescribing a worldwide mission?

It would be sheer desperation for the critic to maintain that the compassionate overtures our Lord made to non-Israelites during his ministry and his predictions of a worldwide mission were deliberately inserted into the record to prepare the way for Matthew 28:18–20. Suppose we take Matthew 26:13 as a test case. Passover was just at hand when Jesus attended a supper at Bethany and was anointed with expensive ointment. He accepted this ministration as a preparation for his burial (v. 12), then went on to state, “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” If in the oral stage the report of this incident had concluded with Jesus’ word about his burial, what writer would have imagined that with such a mood upon him the Saviour would talk about the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel? The sheer unexpectedness of it suggests that this saying could have originated only with our Lord himself.

The word truly points in this direction also. A study of the Gospels reveals that Jesus alone is reported to have used this expression. In this respect it parallels the Son of Man sayings. Schlier remarks that in this word, placed as it is before the solemn “I say to you” of Jesus, “we have the whole of Christology in a nutshell.” The Lord’s own person guarantees the truth of his utterances. It should be noted that the parallel verse in Mark, 14:9, also has the expression.

A difficulty remains, however, for those who accept Matthew 28:19a as the words of the risen Lord. Would the early Church have been so tardy and even reluctant in taking the Gospel to the nations if the Master had commanded the apostles to do this very thing? The account in Acts shows concern for outreach only after several years had passed. Indeed, one might say that the Jerusalem church did little to promote Gentile evangelism in any direct way. Is this a valid objection?

It may be granted that outreach came somewhat slowly. Yet the contribution of the mother church was considerable, both in providing workers (e.g., Barnabas, Silas, and those who began the work at Antioch) and in clearing the way for the reception of Gentiles into the church without circumcision (Acts 15; cf. 11:18). The winning of Gentiles was acknowledged with praise to God (Acts 21:20).

Indeed, accusing the Jerusalem church of tardiness may be inaccurate. In his parting words to the apostles, Jesus named the spheres that would engage their witness—Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the regions beyond—but laid down no timetable. It was essential to establish a strong base in Jerusalem. Luke’s account shows how important this base was even for Paul, the leading missionary to the Gentiles, who kept up regular contact with it.

If the Jerusalem church had spread itself thin by early missionary endeavor in the Gentile world before it had made a solid impact on Jews in their own territory, its success in the wider field would have been seriously hampered. The question would naturally come up, If this new faith embodies the truth of God, why hasn’t it been more successful among those who were supposedly prepared for it by centuries of promise and anticipation? There is something natural, if not inevitable, in the gradual extension of the Church’s outreach—to the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea, to the mixed population of Samaria, then to the non-Jews of the world beyond. Note too that the impulse for the advance from the second to the third stage came by the direction of the Spirit in ever enlarging circles—the Ethiopian eunuch (chapter 8), the household of Cornelius (chapter 10), and the initiation of a large-scale missionary thrust among the Gentiles (chapter 13).

Surely the early Church sought guidance from Scripture, if for no other reason than that the Lord had based his instruction on it during the post-resurrection appearances. In many passages the Old Testament taught that the ingathering of the Gentiles must await the rejuvenation of Israel. James’s use of Amos 9:11, 12 at the Jerusalem Council is instructive. He seems to have identified the emergence and growth of the Hebrew-Christian church with the promised rebuilding of the booth of David and on this basis proceeded to encourage the outreach to all the nations, the next stage in the Amos prophecy. The Acts and the Pauline epistles alike certify that there was no prejudice against having Gentiles in the Church (after all, Judaism was active in proselytizing them through the synagogue). However, some Jewish Christians were insisting that the practice of Judaism should prevail for the Church, namely, that these converts must be circumcised before being welcomed into the fellowship. In effect, this was to make them Jews before they could become Christians.

God chose to enlighten Peter on this matter first (Acts 10), showing him that the old distinction between Jew and Gentile as clean and unclean was no longer valid. In Peter’s words, “He made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9). This was far more meaningful than a ritual purification by the rite of circumcision. Heavily influenced by Peter’s experience at Caesarea, the Jerusalem Council decided that no burden should be put on Gentiles who came into the Church: faith in Christ was sufficient. This decision opened the way for a greatly expanded ministry both to God-fearers and to pagans.

THE CRYSTAL HEXAGON

Out of the cloud a bright rosette

Out of the void, form.

Space and line,

A frost design

Tumbles from the storm.

Out of the timeless into time;

From pure spirit, clay.

Out of the night

Imperial light—

The light, the truth, the way.

BETH MERIZON

Matthew 28:18–20 is not alone in stating a Great Commission that takes in all the nations. Luke 24:47 does the same (cf. Acts 1:8). But another source, one that is easily overlooked, is the commission given to the Apostle Paul (Gal. 1:16; Rom. 1:5; 11:13; cf. Acts 9:15; 22:21; 26:17, 18). Critics who are skeptical about accepting as the words of Jesus many of the statements attributed to him in the Gospels and who are cautious about accepting some of the data are quite ready to admit the testimony of Paul contained in his acknowledged letters. His call to the service of Christ with its specific commission to work among Gentiles is stated in the clearest fashion in his epistles and is confirmed by the passages in Acts. Evidently the early Church did not interpolate this item. It was known and accepted that the Lord Jesus, no later than two or three years after his resurrection, had intervened to transform and redirect the life of the persecutor. Are we to conclude, then, that the Lord commissioned Paul to minister to the Gentiles but gave no such responsibility to the apostles whom he had personally chosen and trained to communicate his Gospel to the world? It is strange that anyone would think the Church stumbled along for many years, only gradually seeing in the Gentiles a proper mission field (recall that Judaism had been seeing them as such for a long time), and then, feeling it needed the Lord’s approval for what was now an accomplished fact, put the Great Commission into his mouth!

The commission given to Paul, while it featured the Gentiles, did not exclude Israel. With this in mind, the emphasis in Matthew 28:19 is seen to be not on all the nations but on all the nations. Israel is not being overlooked or excluded.

One cannot fairly appeal to Mark 16:15, 16 as the words of Jesus, since the whole passage (16:9–20) has inferior textual attestation. However, this portion at least reflects the belief of the Church at an early period that Jesus had commanded a universal proclamation of the Gospel to be followed by the baptism of those who believed. More to our purpose is the observation that if we had the original ending of Mark it would very likely contain something corresponding to Matthew 28:18–20. This inference is based on the fact that most of the substance of Mark is reproduced in Matthew. What supports the inference is the twofold mention in Mark of the plan of Jesus to meet his disciples in Galilee after his resurrection (Mark 14:28; 15:7). Galilee, of course, is the setting for the Great Commission as reported in Matthew.

The Command To Baptize

This element of the Great Commission must be included in our investigation, for if this one can be successfully challenged, the entire passage can more readily be set aside as not emanating from Jesus himself.

One such attempt made in the area of textual criticism is an article by F. C. Conybeare entitled, “The Eusebian Form of the Text Matthew 28:19” (Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 2 [1901], pp. 275–88). He pointed out that in quoting this passage Eusebius usually made use of a shorter form that did not mention baptism. In only three citations did he quote the verse in its full form as we have it in our Bibles. It had to be granted, of course, that this was an isolated phenomenon, for otherwise the entire textual tradition consisting of manuscripts, versions, and patristic quotations failed to support the abbreviated form. Nevertheless the discovery was somewhat disconcerting. However, in an article entitled “The Lord’s Command to Baptize” (Journal of Theological Studies 6 [July, 1905], pp. 481–512), C. H. Chase showed that when Eusebius omitted the command to baptize in quoting the verse he did so because this portion of it was not germane to his discussion. He noted further that this habit is common among other writers both ancient and modern. Consequently one can fairly maintain that Eusebius is not actually a witness for an abbreviated form of Matthew 28:19 that omits the words about baptism.

However, a more serious reason has been advanced for questioning that our Lord spoke the command to baptize, at least in the form Matthew gives. It is said to be inconceivable that the practice of the early Church, as reflected in the Book of Acts, would fail to follow the Master’s command. That is to say, if he actually commanded baptism in the name of the Trinity, the failure of the Acts to report any baptism after this manner is inexplicable.

A reply can be suggested on the following order. What we find in Acts is simply Luke’s report that on several occasions people were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (2:38; 10:48) or in the name of the Lord Jesus (8:16; 19:5). The variation in the terminology—Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus—is enough to warn us that this is not to be understood as a precise formula. In fact, it was intended not as a formula at all but as an indication that when the candidate confessed that sacred name, Jesus Christ was central to the new relationship that was being certified in the baptismal rite. “The fulness of Christ’s saving work is contained in his name” (Bietenhard in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, V, 273).

But what of the trinitarian terminology in Matthew 28:19? Is it intended, in contrast to the short form noted above, to serve as a liturgical guide, specifying the words to be used by those who administer baptism? Jesus did not say, “You are to baptize, saying, ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ ” Therefore we can reasonably maintain that just as the shorter expression indicates that the convert is to recognize the crucial importance of Christ for salvation, the longer form is meant to show that those who administer the rite are to communicate to the candidates for baptism that they are being brought into relationship with the whole Godhead conceived as a unity (note that name, not names, occurs here).

However this may be, one has to grant that by the third or fourth generation thereafter, fairly early in the second century, the Lord’s command in Matthew about baptism was treated as a liturgical formula, for directions are given for administering baptism by using these words (Didache chapter 7). In the second of two references it is stated that if running water is not available, the one who performs the rite is to pour water three times on the head “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” So it may well be that the practice of the Church prior to this time followed the same pattern. Of great interest is the fact that the Didache also speaks of those who have been baptized “in the Lord’s name” (chapter 9). Since it is highly unlikely that two differing formulas would be recognized in the one document, the latter expression must indicate the significance of baptism, reflecting the terminology used in the Book of Acts. So there is no more need to see contradiction between Matthew 28:19 and the language of Acts than to see it between the two passages in the Didache.

We come to a more delicate question. Is it essential to hold that in Matthew 28:19 we have the very words of the risen Lord? Chase is willing to concede that the words in Matthew need not be identical with the actual words of Jesus. On principle, one is obliged to agree, for where we have parallel accounts in the Synoptic Gospels the language frequently differs. So, for example, Mark reports that at the Last Supper Jesus said to his own, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24), whereas Matthew has, “For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). However, the language in Matthew 28:19 about baptism is such that one can hardly imagine anything different coming from the lips of Jesus. What else could he have said that would be similar but different?

If one is inclined to stumble over the trinitarian character of the expression, feeling that it is too early for such a statement to be made, especially since Jesus had not used such language prior to the cross, then it is wise to reflect on the fact that less than thirty years later the Apostle Paul penned a benediction that has a trinitarian framework (2 Cor. 13:14). It is impossible to prove that he is indebted to the language of Jesus for this, but nevertheless it is likely that the triune terminology was familiar to those who received the letter, which in turn tends to carry back the source of the conception to the very beginning of the Church’s life. After all, the triune God figured in the baptism of Jesus at the Jordan (Matt. 3:13–17), and the Saviour’s teaching had included the Spirit along with the Father (John 14:16, 17; Luke 12:10–12).

The Command To Catechize

Rounding out the Great Commission is the injunction to teach those who have been evangelized and baptized. There was much for converts to learn—about the Lord himself, about the Scriptures that foretold his coming and his redemptive work, and about the obligations of discipleship. It is not surprising, then, that immediately after the 3,000 Pentecost converts were baptized they were placed under the instruction of the apostles (Acts. 2:42). Incidentally, this very obligation meant that the apostles were not free to fan out to remote regions of Palestine and beyond. The apostles could not be expected to impart in a few days what it had taken them the greater part of three years to acquire. And the Spirit was adding more to their store of knowledge (John 16:13).

To be sure, it is disappointing that we have no information at this point in Acts about the content of the teaching. Some scholars, especially those who take a rigid form-critical approach to the Gospels, have questioned the existence of any considerable body of teaching derived from the Lord himself and passed on through the apostles to the Church. Instead, they have persuaded themselves that the Church, faced with the need to instruct its members, took the few things that were remembered and greatly added to them, so that our Gospels represent the final stages of the growth of the tradition. The effort to arrive at the authentic words of Jesus in the Gospels and separate them from the contribution of the Church involves tremendous uncertainties. No wonder those who are engaged in it fail to agree among themselves even about the criteria to be used.

It would be cavalier to dismiss the difficulties that beset one who insists that the exact words of Jesus are reproduced in Matthew 28:18–20. The vocabulary is distinctly Matthean at several points. It is enough to maintain that we have a directive from the risen Lord himself rather than a late formulation by the Church. One is bound to be impressed that all the Gospels have a command of some sort attributed to the Saviour (assuming that the original ending of Mark as well as the so-called long ending had it also), and this testimony is supplemented by Acts 1:8. Since the Matthean passage relates to a scene at which 500 brethren may have been present (1 Cor. 15:6), the certification of our Lord’s commission must have been singularly impressive for all concerned and for those to whom the recollection of the scene was imparted.

We have ample reason to be convinced that behind the Great Commission stands the authority of the person of Jesus and his plain, insistent direction to his Church. Christ is cause, not effect; he is subject, not object. The Church is his own (“my church,” Matthew 16:18), and he prescribed in advance how it was to be nourished and guided, even by the words of truth that he had spoken, words that the Holy Spirit had impressed on those who were now equipped to communicate them to others.

On reflection one can readily see that all three parts of the Great Commission are fundamental to the Church’s life and work. The first leads on to the second and the second to the third. Together they form a perfect trilogy, a fitting counterpart to the Trinity itself.

Just over two years ago more than 100 Christian leaders from all over the world were asked by Billy Graham whether they felt there was a need for a congress of Christian leaders on world evangelization. Almost all said yes. In a similar poll almost four years ago, a smaller group had expressed the view that the time was not yet right. The hearty 1971 response set the wheels in motion for Lausanne—the International Congress on World Evangelization, to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, July 16–25, 1974. The tide is in for evangelical witness around the world, and the consensus was we should move on that tide toward the goal of world evangelization in this century.

There was a unanimous conviction, however, that this should not be just another congress. We know we should evangelize; there is no need to spend time, energy, and money to travel halfway around the world to be told that. This congress is to be a working one, dealing with practical issues and strategies, focusing on the how after clearly understanding the what and the why of world evangelization.

Dr. Billy Graham is serving as honorary chairman. However, the base for staffing, planning, and financing the congress is far wider than Billy Graham or any particular church or organization. The executive chairman is the Right Reverend A. Jack Dain, assistant bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia. Dr. Donald E. Hoke, on leave as president of Tokyo Christian College, is the director.

A planning committee of twenty-seven has been drawn from the six continents. Speakers from all parts of the world and many denominations have been invited. Some already announced are the Reverend Gottfried Osei-Mensah, Kenya; Dr. Susuma Uda, Japan; Dr. Rene Padilla, Argentina; Dr. J. R. W. Stott, England; Dr. Peter Beyerhaus, Germany; Bishop Festo Kivengere, Uganda; Dr. Donald McGavran, United States; Canon Michael Green, England; Professor Henri Blocher, France; Mr. Samuel Escobar, Canada; Dr. Francis Schaeffer, Switzerland; Dr. George W. Peters, United States; and Dr. Howard A. Snyder, Brazil.

Two-thirds of the financing will come from contributions from Christians and churches around the world and the fees participants will pay to cover their expenses. Subsidies will be available to participants who need them, but even they are being encouraged to contribute the equivalent of two weeks’ salary, whatever that may be.

Participants (the term was preferred over delegate, since each is expected to participate actively but will not officially represent any church or group) are being invited by the planning committee after consultation with regional and national advisory committees. This is to guarantee, so far as is humanly possible, representation from every part of the worldwide evangelical church and all its evangelistic agencies. Each participant is to be a committed evangelical. The planners are carefully seeking representation of old and young, clergy and laity, men and women, church and para-church organizations.

The purposes of the congress will be:

1. To draw an up-to-date picture of who and where the two billion people are who have never been reached with the Gospel.

2. To make plain the resources, manpower, technology, materials, and approaches available to get the job done.

3. To develop cooperative strategies to finish the job.

4. To state clearly the biblical answer to questions being raised about world evangelization both inside and outside the Church.

5. To seek new power from the Holy Spirit, in whose strength alone world evangelization is possible.

6. To inspire churches and evangelistic agencies all over the world to make a new all-out thrust for world evangelization in our century.

Bishop Dain has said to the Planning Committee:

In the mass of letters which I have been pleased to receive, I have sensed two areas of divided opinion. While some have pleaded that in a day of theological confusion we should again restate the biblical message of evangelism, the “what” and the “why,” many others have pleaded for new insight into the methods which the Spirit of God is blessing around the world—the “how.” Similarly, while some have stressed the absolute need for prayer that the Spirit of God might move in his sovereign power, others have urged the necessity of our human response to that divine initiative. Surely in both of these we face no either/or situation, but the constant recognition that the truth lies in holding both in creative tension.

From the start, this congress has been viewed as a part of a process rather than as an event. What happens before and after the congress is considered to be as important as what happens during the ten-day gathering. Participants will be required to prepare in advance. And it is to be a working congress.

Participants are being invited to tell planners what questions they would like to have answered at the congress and the kinds of information they would like to obtain. Papers to be dealt with at most of the plenary sessions and at the smaller study and strategy groups will be sent in advance. The participant is to react to these, and his comments and questions will be sent to the speaker. Rather than read his paper at the plenary session, the speaker will summarize it and then respond to the comments he has received from the participants.

Each participant will also receive in advance a survey of the unreached peoples of the whole world; intensive research is being done for this now. Along with this will be an interpretative essay indicating why some have been reached more readily than others and suggesting how those yet unreached can be given the Gospel. Each participant will get an in-depth study of his own part of the world. It is hoped that thinking, praying, and planning will be done with the “big picture in mind,” and that the participants will develop more cooperative strategies than ever before.

The planning committee feels so strongly about the need for active participation that it will consider inviting others in the place of those who do not participate actively in pre-congress preparation.

In their pre-congress preparation participants will be encouraged to draw together a wide circle of people to study the material sent to them. Where it is geographically and financially feasible, some delegations may meet in advance of the congress.

Each participant will be urged to set specific post-congress goals and objectives for himself and his church or organization.

To encourage individual participation, plenary sessions have been limited to one a day. Each morning after the one plenary session, participants will meet by nation and language groups to discuss the implications of the morning session for their particular part of the world. They will plan strategies to evangelize their own countries, and they will think through the particular contribution they could make to cross-cultural world evangelization. These groups at times will break down to five persons each.

Participants will vary greatly in interest, experience, and cultural background. For this reason each will be able to plan his own afternoon program, choosing from a variety of options. Afternoons will be spent in smaller groups. One of the reasons for selecting Lausanne was the large number of small meeting rooms available in the modern congress center there.

The first part of the afternoon will be given to practical demonstrations of different kinds of evangelistic activity from each of the six continents. Everyone at the congress will be able to get materials and instruction that would enable him to initiate the same kind of activity back home or in a cross-cultural situation. Each of these demonstrations will be repeated every day. An Evangelization Resource Center in the display area will show participants the many evangelistic tools available in different parts of the world.

The latter part of the afternoon will be spent in study groups and strategy consultations on the theology of evangelization. During the first three days there will be approximately twenty-five study commissions to deal with the crucial questions being raised both inside and outside the Church about world evangelization. After an initial meeting of the study commission as a whole, the second day will be given to national and linguistic groups, and the third day to reporting and preparing materials to submit to the whole congress and later make available to the Church worldwide.

In the strategy consultations, specialists in various phases of evangelistic activity will share ideas, solve problems, and think through how they can most effectively work to achieve the goal of world evangelization. For instance, those involved in evangelism among people of other languages and culture will meet together, as will those in evangelism among Muslims, among secondary students, through the mass media, and so on. These strategy consultations will be open to all. Findings will be shared with the whole congress.

Several of these groups will meet for all six days. The section on cross-cultural evangelism or foreign missions will bring together all the foreign missionaries, who will make up 20 percent of each national group. (Foreign missionaries are nominated by national advisory committees from the country in which they are serving.) One of the dramatic new factors in the world evangelization picture is the emergence of some 300 non-North American, non-European, non-Caucasian foreign-missionary sending agencies. Representatives of these will be present to share their insights and to wrestle with problems that are common to any cross-cultural communication of the Good News.

Most of the other strategy groups will meet for the last three days.

A number of the evening meetings will be given to inspiration, praise, worship, and the testimonies of those who have come to Christ from a variety of religious and pagan backgrounds.

Free time is being scheduled into the program to allow opportunity for the informal fellowship that is so valuable in a gathering like this. It will also offer a chance for special ad hoc groups to deal with particular interests without disrupting the schedule.

Strenuous efforts will be made to follow up the congress and to make its materials available to the Church worldwide. It is hoped that the material will be so clear and practical that it will be of help to concerned laymen all over the world. Participants will be helped and encouraged in every way to spread the message of the congress to their own constituencies and as widely as possible on their return home. Materials are being developed to aid them in doing this.

What could this congress produce for the Church around the world?

1. An up-to-date awareness of the job remaining to be done.

2. Practical information, guidelines, and tools from Christians around the world to help get the job done.

3. A clear biblical foundation for world evangelization, declared not by east or west, north or south, but by representatives of evangelical Christians worldwide.

4. A new sense of cooperation in strategic planning to meet current opportunities.

5. The lighting of an evangelistic flame that could make a reality in our time the slogan of an earlier generation of students, “Evangelize to a finish to bring back the King.”

Only 3,000 persons will be able to come to Lausanne. Many thousands more will have available to them materials that will enable them to share in the congress by study, prayer, and action toward world evangelization.

Prayer is central to the congress. All over the world prayer groups are being formed to intercede for God’s direction and power in the congress preparation, program, and results. Christians everywhere are urged to make the congress a matter of daily prayer and to encourage others to do the same. At the congress itself, groups of ten will meet daily in the residences to pray. The daily national and language group meetings will have a period of prayer for their parts of the world.

All those involved are deeply aware of the truth of Psalm 27:1, 2: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

As this issue devoted to missions goes to press, Religious News Service has released a depressing report of missions retreat and retrenchment by another large denomination, the United Methodist Church. Its 1974 overseas budget for missions is $4 million less than that of 1971 and about $1 million less than this year’s. The number of missionaries has declined from 1,309 in 1969 to 870. The situation is quite similar to that previously reported in the United Presbyterian Church.

The need of the world for the Gospel is greater than ever before, and the opportunities to present it are countless. The response of God’s people is less than adequate to needs and opportunities.

We are praying that this issue devoted to missions will stir hearts to a new obedience and to genuine sacrifice to fulfill the mandate that binds us: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

Attitudes toward evangelism and renewal are changing in the Episcopal Church. As noted at last month’s triennial convention (see October 26 issue, page 55), a recent survey of church members found “an almost ‘un-Episcopal’ preoccupation with evangelism.” According to the summary report, “What We Learned From What You Said,” now members believe the church’s mission “begins with renewal and rebirth.” And they want the church’s program and budget to reflect these priorities without neglecting social involvement.

Symptomatic of this new mood is the growing charismatic renewal. Outreach, personal spiritual growth, prayer, Bible study, social consciousness, and a concern for unity mark the renewal. Gone is the divisiveness that marred the early years of its development, the kind that is still splitting churches and believers in other main-line denominations where Pentecostalism is an issue. A main reason for the unity, say bishops close to the renewal, is a pastoral ministry that eschews labels and reaches out to everybody.

Bishop William Folwell of Central Florida, 50, who hasn’t spoken in tongues but nevertheless is “happy to be identified with the renewal,” has pushed prayer and Bible-study groups in his diocese for the past four years. He also pushes the “healthy integrating of spirituality and social activism” among charismatics. (The bishop says he lost his faith during “a dark night of the soul” seven years ago, but the Spirit returned it to him, imparting a “conscious awareness of the living Christ.”)

Not everything that is happening spiritually among Episcopalians is associated with the charismatic movement, however. On the other hand, like Folwell, many Episcopalians who have not spoken in tongues still consider themselves part of the charismatic renewal.

Indeed, there is little stress even by the charismatics on speaking in tongues, a major factor no doubt in the unity that prevails among renewal-minded parishioners. For example, Bishop William G. Weinhauer of Western North Carolina, 49, says he knows about fifty priests in metropolitan New York who have experienced tongues but who speak of their experience only to other charismatics. After wrestling with the issue, said Weinhauer, they decided that glossolalia isn’t the movement’s sine qua non. Because the charismatics declare Christ’s sovereignty, Weinhauer says he supports them. Between 25 and 30 per cent of the laity and clergy in his own diocese are charismatics, says Weinhauer. But he thinks the percentage nationally may be only half that.

Bishop William Frey of Colorado, 43, agrees that participation is relatively small but insists that influence far exceeds numerical strength. He cites the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Houston, which is visited by people from all over the world. They come, Frey explains, because Redeemer’s members have a life-style that combines Pentecost with the Incarnation and powerful proclamation of the Gospel with a sensitive, active social awareness. (At the convention, Redeemer members handed out buttons with the slogan, “Discover the Missing Piece.”)

Personable, persuasive Frey has been active in the movement for more than two years and admits privately to speaking, praying, and singing in tongues. Presiding bishop-elect John M. Allin thinks Frey is a good example of the spiritual-social balance characteristic of many charismatics. (The social part got him in trouble two years ago when he was bishop of Guatemala. The government, suspecting he was linked to Communism, ordered him out of the country.) Frey says he has found “liberation” in the charismatic renewal: “It enabled me to die to things I knew I should but was unable to.”

Allin, whose mother is a Southern Baptist, sees the Holy Spirit leading into new forms of evangelism. The church hasn’t been listening to the laity, he complains, especially young people. “We’ve been serving them potato salad and hot dogs when they want to know the Lord and serve him,” he said in his acceptance speech. “We haven’t been contagious Christians. People come to our services and hear very little Gospel. We’ve had more interpreters than prophets.”

The presiding bishop-elect views the charismatic renewal as further evidence that people are hungry and thirsty for God. “But we must test the spirits. We cannot suggest that any manifestation is valid.” Allin also deplores the “accidental Christian who gets confirmed because mama wants him to.” “I have a desire to stand up and yell” at such confirmation-class members, he adds. And this blasé attitude toward following Jesus is something Allin wants to change.

Alexander Stewart, 49, bishop of Western Massachusetts, supports Faith Alive¹The three-year-old Faith Alive lay witness movement (Box 21, York, Pa. 17405) is composed of Episcopal laymen. Volunteer teams have conducted evangelistic week-end programs in about 300 churches so far. weekends and small Bible-study groups to speed up the change in young people’s attitudes. For the last three summers, for example, his diocese once again has held the old-fashioned vacation school manned by committed Christian college students who conduct colorful two-week classes in each parish. And Stewart also encourages clergy and lay to attend renewal seminars. His diocese has developed an innovative evangelism kit now being used in several dioceses across the country.

Bishops aren’t the only ones doing something about renewal and evangelism. Minneapolis layman Bill Mudge and his wife Janet are promoting contagious Christianity in the church. They trace their conversion to an inter-denominational Bible-study group twelve years ago that in turn had its origins in an Episcopal women’s prayer group. Three years ago, with his bishop’s approval, Mudge helped to organize a week-long evangelistic training program conducted by Campus Crusade for Christ. About 200 Episcopalians were among the 1,200 who attended. Twenty Episcopal Bible-study groups formed as a result of the program, says Mudge, and they are still functioning. (Mudge has since sold his business and now spends all his time in evangelism. He serves on a special evangelism committee appointed by Bishop Philip F. McNairy and organizes training programs for laity and clergy.)

Frey sums up the attitude of those involved in the church’s spiritual renewal: “We have a mutual sense of submission to one another in love. We’re united. We move in a single direction. And we see Christ in one another.”

A Question Of Identity

National leadership of the Episcopal Church is changing at a time when there is declining membership and widespread grass-roots dissatisfaction with the church’s programs. In unofficial figures for 1972, membership in the denomination has dropped from 3.4 million in 1965 to 3 million, while the number of clergymen has risen (there are now more clergymen than parishes available). Church-school membership has dropped as well. And financial woes are reflected by the bare-bones budget, which passed at last month’s general convention with only one significant addition: $65,000 for COCU.

A clue to the restlessness is perhaps seen in a recent survey of the people in the pews. They listed as top church priorities education, evangelism, and renewal (see October 26 issue, page 55), hardly where the church is at in its official thinking. (Indeed, the denomination’s executive council said it simply did not agree with the priorities found by the survey, and in some of the more liberal dioceses the findings have apparently been kept from the membership at large.)

Along with confronting these problems, the new presiding bishop-elect, Mississippi’s renewal-minded John M. Allin, must also face a large group of disgruntled clergy and lay people who favor ordination of women to the priesthood, an innovation rejected at last month’s triennial convention of the church. In a closing session, Allin, who personally opposes such ordination, nevertheless declared that he will not let the issue “drift off into limbo.” He said he intends to appoint an ad hoc committee to define the theology of the priesthood and the theology of human sexuality, an idea similar to a proposal rejected by the House of Deputies. (The issue is bound to be a hot one during the coming triennium. Some sixty bishops signed a statement favoring ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate. Conservatives can be expected to go on stiffly opposing it.)

On another controversial theological issue, bishops in the closing hours of the convention approved and the deputies concurred with a resolution to remove the necessity of the 400-year-old practice of confirmation. The new trial rite states that baptism alone is a “full initiation” into the church. Formerly the bishop-administered sacrament of confirmation was essential for membership in the denomination; without it a person was denied communion. While confirmation now becomes optional—a service of Christian commitment rather than the sacrament that imparts added grace or the fullness of the Spirit (as held by some Anglican traditionalists)—a directive from the bishops urges all “baptized members of the church … to reaffirm their baptismal promise in the presence of the Bishop.” Since any baptized believer, regardless of denomination, now may become a communicant upon approval by a local parish rector, a major technicality remains to be worked out: the church must decide just who is and who is not “officially” an Episcopalian.

CHERYL FORBES

Key 73: More In ′74?

Key 73, the year-long cooperative evangelistic endeavor involving 150 denominations and organizations, officially ends December 31. But members of the central committee (representatives of the participating groups) in a two-day wrap-up in St. Louis last month determined to keep the concept of cooperative, concentrated evangelism alive. A meeting was set for next March to explore possibilities for the future.

Part of the meeting was spent reviewing successes and failures of the past year. Lack of adequate financing had been a serious problem (see March 2 issue, page 53), but by eliminating many proposed national projects, including television specials, and mounting a summer fund-raising campaign, the group reduced the deficit from more than $200,000 to $8,500 by mid-October. (Thirty-five participating bodies haven’t financially supported Key 73 at all, and another thirty-five haven’t sent any funds this year.)

Members lamented an apparent failure to communicate Key 73’s hopes and concerns to the churches, and they cited the widespread absence of committees at state and provincial level. They also questioned the lack of support from traditionally evangelistic groups (most of whom stayed out of Key 73 for separatist reasons), and one leader even suggested such groups might be hypocritical in face of their stated commitment to evangelism.

On the brighter side, 40 million Scripture portions were distributed (Denver was among the cities saturated, and more than six tons of Scriptures were handed out at the 35,000-student University of Toronto). In Quebec, 22,000 French-Canadian Catholics gathered for two “love feasts” that featured preaching and Bible study—and an altar call. Success stories were reported from a number of other communities and from even the committee’s hotel dining room, where a waiter sought to be converted.

Key 73 has been a historic event, asserted guest speaker Harold Lindsell of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Unlike other campaigns and revivals, it revolved around a strategy rather than around name personalities, he pointed out.

“The spirit of Key 73 must continue,” declared executive committee chairman Thomas Zimmerman of the Assemblies of God. “Key 73 was just the churches getting organized to begin the work.”

Others share his view that Key 73 may be the prelude to something bigger and better in the days ahead.

BARRIE DOYLE

Religion In Transit

The U. S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal seeking to restore the tax exemption of evangelist Billy Janies Hargis’s Christian Crusade organization. Hargis was backed by many church groups, including the National Council of Churches, who feel the tax ruling infringes on free speech and advocacy. The court did agree to hear an appeal by Bob Jones University on loss of its exemption over the issue of segregation.

There were 4,300 church fires last year with losses of more than $28 million, up from 3,400 fires the preceding year and losses of $23.3 million.

DEATHS

ALFRED T. Y. CHOW, 83, well-known Chinese theological educator and evangelical editor; in Hong Kong, after a long illness.

ALBERT EDWARD DAY, 89, popular United Methodist author, clergyman, and evangelist who founded the denomination’s New Life Movement that flourished in the forties; in Front Royal, Virginia.

The Zondervan publishing house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has gone public with an initial offering of 363, 883 shares of common stock.

Three tons of books, artifacts, and gadgets seized in 1963 by the Food and Drug Administration were returned last month to the Church of Scientology in Washington.

According to the latest Canadian census report, Roman Catholics claim 9.9 million souls, 46.2 per cent of the nation’s population, up less than 1 per cent over ten years ago. The main-line Protestant denominations all showed declines. The United Church of Canada slipped from 20.1 per cent in 1961 to 17.5 per cent; the Anglicans dipped from 13.2 per cent to 11.8 per cent. The fourth largest group, nearly one million, is those stating they have no religion.

Personalia

The noose around the neck of Concordia Seminary’s embattled president John H. Tietjen was loosened last month at a meeting of the seminary’s governing board. On the advice of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s constitutional-matters committee the board vacated an earlier action suspending Tietjen. The committee decreed that procedures governing the dismissal of a faculty member must also apply to the president.

Missionary Albert T. Platt, 46, director of Central American Mission’s seminary in Guatemala will succeed the retiring William H. Taylor as CAM’s general secretary.

Southern Presbyterian lay leader William B. Walton, Sr., president of the Holiday Inn motel chain, was elected to the American Bible Society’s board of managers.

Venerable preacher John SutherlandBonnell, who served at New York City’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church for twenty-seven years, has accepted—at age 80—an interim pastorate at a Presbyterian church in nearby New Rochelle.

Moderator-designate of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland: minister David Steel, 63, of St. Michael’s in Linlithgow.

Director Bill Gwinn of California’s Mt. Hermon Bible conference center was elected to a two-year term as president of Christian Camping International. Nearly 1,000 camp leaders attended CCI’s convention last month in New Mexico.

Donald C. Brandenburgh is the new executive director of the National Sunday School Association.

The U. S. Air Force has its first woman chaplain: Rhode Island American Baptist minister Lorraine Kay Potter, a graduate of New York’s Keuka College and Colgate Rochester Divinity School.

In his novel August 1914, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitzyn had to write the name of God in small print to get it by the censors. “Atheistic narrow-mindedness,” scolded Solzhenitzyn. “If we write the names of regional officers and communist secret police in capitals, why shouldn’t we use capitals for the highest creative power of the universe?”

World Scene

About 40,000 South Koreans and 2,000 believers from thirty-six other countries attended the tenth Pentecostal World Conference in Seoul, the first time it has been held in the Orient.

Catholic Pentecostals have taken comfort in a report that Pope Paul placed his blessing on the movement in a meeting last month with eleven of the 126 charismatic leaders who attended a conference outside Rome. The pope said the movement was marked by “the desire to give oneself completely to Christ; a great openness to the calls of the Holy Spirit; [and] a more diligent use of Scripture.”

World Health Organization researcher Anthony R. May says that every day 1,000 people commit suicide and ten times that number attempt it. Hungary and Czechoslovakia have the highest rates, Chile and Venezuela the lowest.

Some 600 French Protestants, including 50 pastors, signed a statement calling for a re-Orientation of the Reformed Church of France away from excessive emphasis on political and social issues and to greater attention to the Bible and spiritual matters.

Global Lutheran membership stands at 73.3 million, down slightly from last year.

China watching: a Hong Kong clergyman says Tanzanian Christians studying in China have pressured authorities into arranging church services for them.

New pressure is apparently being applied against churches in the White Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. Reports say local governments have ordered the removal of religious symbols from church buildings and are imposing a “consolidation of parishes” over a large geographic area, resulting in the closing down of some churches and loss of attendance in others.

The English-language church of the Assemblies of God in Belgium now has official recognition by the government. The church was organized in Brussels ten years ago by Charles Greenaway, a former missionary to Zaire. Four years ago the denomination founded the Continental Bible College, which now has sixty students from twenty-four countries.

Festo Kivengere and Michael Cassidy are excited about Osborne, Kansas (population 2,500). There, last month, in a local Key 73 campaign, the two evangelists from Africa saw “almost a community-wide response” to the preaching of the Gospel. Night after night, crowds of 1,200 jammed the town’s largest building.

Large cities, too, are the scene of their turnabout in Christian ministry: a black Anglican bishop speaking to audiences of predominantly white Americans, and preaching beside him, a white lay preacher from South Africa, where apartheid still holds sway.

Bishop Kivengere, reputedly one of the outstanding black evangelists in Africa today, lives in Kabale, Uganda, and has been deeply involved in the so-called East Africa revival for nearly thirty years. He has teamed with Cassidy, who founded African Enterprise in Pasadena, California, since the two preached together in a citywide mission in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1969.

This October was the first time the pair had undertaken a community-wide ministry in the United States. Their itinerary includes Salinas, Pasadena, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, California; St. Louis (where they are associate evangelists to Billy Graham in his November crusade); and Pittsburgh. Osborne, though, first turned them on.

“It was a reviving ministry to the church,” declared Cassidy in an interview in Salinas. “When you hit the nerve center, you see the whole community respond. Evangelists should think more of the forgotten places.” The Osborne invitation came from a minister friend of Kivengere’s who had known him while they were both at Pittsburgh Seminary in 1967.

A warm, open attitude prevailed at the Key 73 crusades in California, too. Meetings over four to six days included large rallies, informal sessions on college campuses, luncheon speeches to civic and service groups, pastors’ conferences, and neighborhood teas.

Kivengere, 53, and Cassidy, 36, have impressive credentials as evangelical spokesmen. They are well plugged into the political-racial scene in Africa. Interestingly, they first met in California while Cassidy, a native of Johannesburg, was a student at Fuller Seminary and Kivengere was on a solo preaching mission. Cassidy felt called to urban evangelism in Africa, earned an M.A. at Cambridge University, and found his call solidified at Fuller. His African Enterprise organization, now with eight team members, was formed in the summer of 1961, and missions are carried out throughout Africa.

Last March Cassidy organized the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism (see April 13 issue, page 47), arranging for Billy Graham to address the congress and to conduct rallies in Durban and Johannesburg. Unprecedented racial breakthroughs occurred, and the pair see continuing fruits.

A free-lance evangelist until he joined African Enterprise in 1971, Bishop Festo, as he is called, interpreted for Graham throughout East Africa in 1960. He spoke at the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism and at the West African congress in 1968, and he represents Africa on the planning committee for the 1974 international congress to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, next summer. In December, 1972, he was enthroned bishop of Kigezi in western Uganda. Later this month he will conduct a mission to the Episcopal diocese of Pittsburgh, which ordained him a deacon six years ago.

The African evangelists were asked about government and churches in their native land. Cassidy asserted that the South African situation is more fluid now than at any time in the past thirty years. “Political patterns are in flux,” he said. “For a long time they were absolutely rigid. There is some relaxing on a day-to-day basis of ‘petty apartheid.’ ”

His remarks corroborated an assessment in Time magazine (October 15) that “the granite-hard face of apartheid is cracking.” Such chinks as abandonment of the Job Reservation Act (which barred blacks from the best jobs) and recent integration of public-park benches, hotel elevators, buses, planes, and athletic events are hopeful signs, says Cassidy.

Some parishes of the mixing-nixing Dutch Reformed Church now permit multi-racial services, a change that may stem from the “total denominational sweep” that took place during the South African Congress on Mission and Evangelism, co-sponsored by African Enterprise and the South African Council of Churches (the first church council to back a regional congress). Only the largest wing of the Dutch Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church were not officially represented. Cassidy estimates that 55 per cent of the 700 delegates (they all stayed in a white South African hotel) were non-whites.

Pressing his observation that the pace of change is accelerating, Cassidy added that in June the Progressive political party also held an interracial congress in a white hotel in South Africa. “The personal and social dimensions of the Gospel really are coming together,” Cassidy said with a smile. “In South Africa, evangelicalism has tended to become an ecclesiastical ghetto unrelated to social and political issues of the land. And non-evangelical churches have tended to over-emphasize the social and political.… Now, each is realizing the importance of the other’s contributions.”

Another bright spot cited by Cassidy is the first prayer breakfast for the Kwa-Zulu cabinet and other Zulu political leaders, coordinated by an African Enterprise team member and Gatsha Butheleci, prime minister of Kwa-Zulu and a professing Christian.

Still, full equality for blacks is only a dream in South Africa. The government does the “nationalist jig,” said Cassidy, meaning leaders alternate between concessions and hard-line segregation—“one step forward, two steps backward.” And black power is definitely on the rise—a copy of the United States movement four or five years ago, Cassidy thinks. Ironically, black-power separatists fall into line with Prime Minister John Vorster’s “segregationist mentality.” Black powerists, however, have their eyes on full control.

Both South Africa, where 22 million persons live on land considerably larger than Texas but smaller than Alaska, and Uganda, about the size of Wyoming and with a population of about 10 million, are overwhemlingly “Christian.” In South Africa, 87 per cent are at least nominally Christian, according to Cassidy; in Uganda, 70 per cent, says Kivengere. Most Ugandan leaders are products of church mission schools. And, notes Kivengere, churches there “have been able to stand amid political confusion because there has been a movement of God in renewal for the past forty years.”

When Uganda won independence from British rule in 1962, churchmen feared Christianity would die out because the colonial missionaries were recalled. But, observes Kivengere, the opposite happened: “Propagation of Christianity has been done by the indigenous people themselves. We see more young people becoming educated evangelists. We see hunger for preaching the Gospel.”

Missions experts predict Africa will have 359 million Christians by 2000 A.D. If so, part of the credit will be due articulate, compassionate men of God like Kivengere and Cassidy.

Free To Preach

After three months in jail, Pastor Park Hyong Kyu of Seoul’s First Presbyterian Church, the world’s largest Presbyterian congregation, was freed, pending appeal of a two-year prison term on charges of political subversion.

Hooking The Neighbors

“The preacher says, ‘Witness,’ so we go out and do what he does—preach—and wonder why the fish don’t bite.” But Marilyn Kunz and Neighborhood Bible Studies co-founder Catherine Schell throw out a different hook. This fall they’ve been conducting workshops across the nation on how to bait it.

Preaching is only one way to communicate the Gospel, they note; fishers of men and women may also angle from small, nondenominational Bible discussion groups. Their lures may be coffee and rolls, baby sitters, the importance of Bible knowledge for total education, and freedom to disagree with or be ignorant of church doctrine.

“We have to get out of our spiritual ghettos and meet our neighbors and co-workers where they are,” Miss Kunz told a group in Ames, Iowa, last month. “It makes me nervous,” added the outspoken graduate of New York’s Biblical Seminary, “when someone says, ‘My neighbors know where I stand.’ What they know is that you’re a religious nut who goes to church a lot.”

After working with college and nursing students through Inter-Varsity and Nurses Christian Fellowship, Miss Kunz and Miss Schell, a nursing graduate of Columbia University-Presbyterian Hospital, concluded that mothers of young children generally attended church less and needed it more. In 1960 they began a Bible-study group for neighborhood women in posh Westchester County near New York City. Within a year a dozen groups involving men as well as women were discussing the Gospel of Mark, and the two instigators were kept busy in their Dobbs Ferry, New York, headquarters writing questions to guide study of other Scripture passages.

FOR CHRISTMAS

The United States will have a religious and a secular Christmas stamp this year. The religious stamp depicts a Madonna and Child by Raphael, from the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. The secular design is a “whimsical, old-fashioned Christmas tree” designed in needlepoint by American artist Dolli Tingle.

Both stamps will be printed in six colors. One billion copies of each will be issued, with the first day of sale November 7 at the National Gallery of Art.

GLENN EVERETT

Last year NBS sold 170,000 copies of the seventeen study guides now available, including one translated into Spanish by a Colombian nurse. Japanese, Vietnamese, Finnish, and German translations are in progress and English versions have been used as far away as Singapore and Viet Nam. Study groups meet in Canada as well as throughout the United States. Half a dozen part-time regional staffers assist leaders and help get groups started, but because of NBS’s unstructured approach virtually anyone can start a study group. Hence no one knows for sure how many groups have been organized. Some two hundred meet in the New York City area alone, seventy-five in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, region, seventy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, thirty-five in South Bend, Indiana. And a number of churches that have organized neighborhood study groups as part of Key 73 use the NBS guides.

But success is bad, Miss Kunz warned the workshop in Ames, where at least twenty groups meet. Neighborhood groups should be “lean and hungry”; groups that are too large prevent total participation. Educators now understand the value of discussion for learning, Miss Schell pointed out, but many churches continue to rely only on lecture methods, even for adults.

Always having a teacher “steals from people the joy of discovery,” they claimed. But they stress that home study does not replace church worship. Rather, they have found, people who study the Bible for themselves desire—and demand—sound biblical preaching.

In a sample study of Mark 2:1–12 Miss Schell demonstrated the role of an NBS leader (a different person each week). Using questions from the NBS study guide, she led lively discussions of the scene Mark described, what the facts he related mean, and their application to individuals in the group.

There are no pre-programmed answers. “Our questions are open-ended,” Miss Kunz said. “When people write asking for the answers, we refer them to the Bible. We really have the highest view of Scripture: we take what it says and refuse to rewrite it to make it palatable or to make it fit some topical arrangement.”

They have a high view of courtesy and sensitivity as well. “Have you ever been in a group where someone says, ‘Ah, that reminds me of Ezekiel 34:18’?” Miss Kunz asked. “I guarantee you that in Ames there are a hundred people who don’t know who or what Ezekiel is.” Resorting to “the Christian’s numbers racket” is “terribly rude. A non-Christian in that group is impressed only with what the Christian knows, not with who he knows.” To prevent that hole in the nets, and to avoid the dangers inherent in taking things out of context, NBS discussions are set up so as not to wander from the appointed passage.

Although NBS aims primarily at thinking but unchurched adults, a number of church groups and Sunday-school classes are using the guides. Several pastors attribute the strength of their churches to the NBS and its fishing methods. Once hooked, apparently, the neighbors stay hooked.

JANET ROHLER GREISCH

Religion At The Fair

Publishers from around the world swarmed to Germany in mid-October for the biggest trade event in their business: the Frankfurt Book Fair. More than 3,800 were there, 930 German (including 43 East German) and 2,884 non-German. Most German booksellers place their orders for the year at the fair; foreign publishers come not only to sell books but to sell and secure translation and other foreign rights.

Although West Germany, like the rest of the Continent, is highly secularized, evangelical books are increasingly in demand, according to publishers Ulrich Brockhaus of R. Brockhaus Verlag and Hans Steinacker of Aussaat Verlag. The titles offered this year show that German evangelicals still rely to a large extent on translations of British and American works; few evangelicals are writing in German.

Both in and outside the fair, several varieties of Marxist groups were selling literature and appealing for contributions to support “the workers” in Chile. Books on Hitler, both scholarly and fanciful ones, are the rage in West Germany this year, and a small number of new works express a measure of sympathy for the Nazi movement or individual leaders.

Challenging the Marxists while mimicking their style and some of their slogans, the Children of God actively sold their anti-Communist, anti-American, anti-church apocalyptic literature; they had a big display at the fair in hopes of finding commercial publishers for their tracts. The Evangelical Sisters of Mary from Darmstadt seemed to be the only group actively witnessing to the biblical gospel, though plenty of publishers sold evangelical literature in German and other languages.

Possev Verlag, a Frankfurt firm that specializes in publishing Christian and other non-Communist literature in Russian, reports it has produced approximately 100,000 Bibles in Eastern European languages so far this year, most of them on order from Underground Evangelism.

A spokesman for London’s Hodder and Stoughton publishing firm reported that sales of religious books in Great Britain were up 300 per cent over last year.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

End Of State Church?

Church and state will be totally separate in West Germany within two decades, predicted Dr. W. M. Oesch, president of the non-state-supported Lutheran Theological Seminary in Oberursel, in an interview last month. He said he also expects an end to state support for faculties of theology in the universities.

The German government collects a controversial church tax—approximately 10 per cent of each person’s income tax. This is passed on to the church in which that person was baptized, provided it is one of the two main churches (state Protestant or Roman Catholic). This Kirchensteuer is the source of the tremendous wealth and financial power of the German churches. Although few attend their services, the German Protestant churches are able to give major support to the WCC, including its much-criticized grants to African guerrilla organizations.

Withdrawal of tax support will necessitate a radical change in the churches’ attitudes, said Oesch. He feels that at present pastors and administrators can virtually ignore the needs of their parishioners because of their financial security. Thanks to the state-church mentality, they think they are influencing society through its structures even if no one goes to church. But more and more citizens are filing the papers necessary to be taken off the churches’ books (and tax rolls).

GOLFING GUILTLESSLY

Now there’s a way to overcome that twinge of guilt from playing golf Sunday morning instead of attending the Sunday worship service: switch churches. There’s a Japanese sect gaining a few adherents on the West Coast, the Church of Perfect Liberty, that puts golf right on the fairway to heaven—or, at least, the tee to self-improvement. Says chief U. S. minister Koreaki Yano: “Players can learn the power of meditation and can eliminate bad ideas.”

Oesch, who was born in Colorado, has been working in Germany since the 1930s. He belongs to the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church (Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche), formed last year by the merger of several independent Lutheran groups. It has 45,000 members in West Germany and is in fellowship with 15,000 independent Lutherans in East Germany. It also has 20,000 African and 3,000 European members in South Africa.

HAROLD O. J. BROWN

Nigeria: The New Brotherhood

A weird combination of the Christian faith and African religious rites has become popular in Nigeria’s South-East State. Known as the Brotherhood of the Cross and the Star, the movement is drawing followers from all denominations. It recently sent a young missionary “bishop” to organize a branch in the United States.

The brotherhood was described in a Toronto interview by visiting Presbyterian elder Chief Ntieyong Udo Akpan, 49, pro-chancellor and chairman of the governing council of the University of Nigeria, vice-president of the country’s Christian Council, and formerly holder of the highest rank in the Nigerian civil service as chief secretary of the national cabinet.

The founder of the new sect is a former Presbyterian, Orumba Orumba Obu, believed by the most devoted of his followers to be Christ in his second coming. All who become members of his brotherhood give a tenth of their income to him believing he will use their contributions to redeem the world. The Bible is read and studied, and Christian hymns are used in worship. Baptism by immersion is practiced (a Presbyterian minister recently quit his church in Calabar, joined the sect, and was rebaptized).

But Obu appeals to African tradition by admitting the existence of evil spirits and ghosts. The “charm” used against their power is belief in Christ. A sick person is under an evil spell, which is broken by the power of prayer rather than by a witch doctor. Reports of miraculous cures have brought crowds to his meetings. Married women who have been childless for years claim that after accepting the new faith they have become pregnant.

Chief Akpan points out that Africans are deeply religious by nature. Many believe there are numerous gods, tribal and others. But they acknowledge one supreme God, ruler of heaven and earth, called in Nigeria Abasi Ibom. They also believe in charms, sorceries, witchcraft, the power of evil spirits, and reincarnation. By pointing to the Bible and its mention of the plurality of the Godhead and the existence of evil spiritual beings, Obu is combining the old with the new in a way that appeals to thousands of Nigerians.

Chief Akpan, who has a degree in economics from the University of London, is the author of five books, including The Struggle For Secession, described as “the first authentic inside account of the Nigerian civil war.” He says the concept of chief is no longer that of a tribal or clan leader regarded with something akin to worship because he is believed to possess magical powers. Today he is the leader responsible for local development and community progress. This year Akpan was elected paramount chief of Ibiono Ibam, an area including 182 villages each with its own chief. He accepted the honor on condition that he be installed in a Christian service of worship rather than by the practice of pagan rites. He had his way.

DECOURCY H. RAYNER

Korea: Gis And Jesus

The revival movement in the Korean army continues. In two September mass baptism ceremonies a total of 3,400 were baptized. Nearly 150,000 soldiers have reportedly become Christians in the last two years, bringing to an estimated 35 per cent the number of believers among the troops.

Homosexual churchmen won recognition from the National Council of Churches last month. They got the NCC’s Governing Board to approve plans for dialogue with a group sympathetic to the gay cause. But it wasn’t smooth sailing. An increasingly vocal Orthodox bloc opposed the action, taken during a semi-annual meeting of the board held in New York. The Orthodox members of the board argued strongly that homosexual behavior is “contrary to Christian belief.” Proponents of the measure pointed out that dialogue does not imply approval of the gay life-style but might provide opportunity for witness.

The controversy suggested that an old problem is following the NCC into a new era: how to manifest unity in matters on which Christians are divided.

The board meeting, second since a recent reorganization, was the last for the current general secretary, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy. He retires December 31, to be succeeded by Ms. Claire Randall, currently a staff executive of Church Women United (see October 26 issue, page 68). Ms. Randall, 54, was elected by the board at its New York meeting in a 110–61 vote over the Reverend Albert M. Pennybacker, an Ohio pastor. She had been recommended by a special search committee. Pennybacker, 42, was nominated from the floor by members of his denomination, the Disciples of Christ.

Opposition to Ms. Randall came primarily from the Orthodox and the Disciples. The Orthodox reportedly voted against her in part because of her role in the preparation of an abortion-on-demand paper. She served as chairman of an NCC task force on abortion that produced the statement, currently in limbo.

Growing uneasiness of the Orthodox in the NCC will probably be the biggest challenge for Ms. Randall in her new job. The problem will be to keep “mission” activists happy without alienating the more conservative Orthodox. (The board voted approval of a formal suggestion that she and/or Espy invite the heads of all the Orthodox churches “to discuss Orthodox participation in the NCC.”)

The underlying issue has been part and parcel of the ecumenical movement since its inception. Optimists had hoped that NCC restructure might somehow alleviate the tension and even attract Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Missouri Synod Lutherans into the fold.

That dream seems to have faded. An advisory committee to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded that NCC membership would be “neither desirable nor feasible at this time.” Southern Baptists could not even bring themselves to any substantial participation in Key 73. A conservative trend in the Missouri Synod leaves little room for the NCC.

Indeed, the NCC may have all it can do to hold on to the denominations it already has.¹The National Council of Churches currently has thirty-one member denominations with a total constituency numbering about 41,614,000. Espy, who succeeded in bringing the council through the controversial Viet Nam war years with no defections, mourned at some length the NCC’s recent loss of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference. (The 5,300-member denomination voted withdrawal at its annual meeting in August.) In his final report to the board Espy said,

I am told unofficially that the opposition centered chiefly on the position of the National Council on advocacy. If this be true, this is at least a clear issue on which to differ. It is also a legitimate issue in the sense that enlightened and dedicated Christians hold varying views on the role of the corporate church or certainly a council of churches in taking a public stand on social questions. I am glad the withdrawal apparently was not on the spurious ground sometimes adduced that the National Council is under Communist influence, that it is trying to be a super-church, or that it is based on a washed-out theological indifferentism.

SUNDAY

Professional football teams and churches have a lot in common, Minneapolis United Church of Christ pastor Phillip W. Sarles pointed out in an “open letter” to President Jim Finks of the Minnesota Vikings. Both are troubled by “no shows,” he said, but when the team is in town for a Sunday game the attendance problem is proportionately greater for the churches. Congress may have put the football teams in a bind with its lifting of the TV blackout for home games, but it “did us dirt, also,” said Sarles, by putting all the holidays on Mondays.

Money problems? “It’s an old story with me,” commented the minister. “The thing with me is that I don’t get the same ‘take’ from each ‘customer’ that you do. Boy, if I could, we would do a lot of good for many people. I just let each one’s conscience be his guide. You’d go broke in a hurry that way, Jim.”

Whatever ecumenical spirit is left in North America seems to be much more visible at local and regional levels. This has certainly been true for Key 73, and Espy’s report noted that full Roman Catholic membership in ecumenical agencies increased in the last five years as follows: state ecumenical agencies, from two to thirteen, with thirty-nine dioceses involved; metropolitan agencies, from one to six, involving eight dioceses; city and county agencies, from twenty-three to more than a hundred. Nineteen dioceses are involved in the Commission on Religion in Appalachia, a regional agency. In citing statistics on less-than-full Roman Catholic membership in ecumenical agencies, Espy said almost all state, county, and city church councils now have cooperative activity with Roman Catholics. For state councils, this is a 50 per cent gain since 1967.

Espy is not overjoyed with the trend. He warned that the acknowledged resurgence of localism and regionalism in American churches “unless it is matched by a comparable commitment to the national and the world dimensions … could be disastrous for our country, for our churches and for the world.”

Espy, who was honored at a formal dinner at Riverside Church, is leaving his successor with a financial headache. During each of the last several years the NCC has had to reduce its overall budget. Earlier this year the council’s Division of Church and Society had its budget cut by two-thirds, necessitating reduction of its elected staff from fifteen to seven (among those dropped was a black Episcopal priest whose exit sparked a controversy).

Religious News Service said Ms. Randall, a Presbyterian, is known as an efficient and “tough” administrator. In an interview prior to her election, she told RNS that her interest in ecumenism dates back to the 1940s. She was especially inspired, she said, by the writings of the late Bishop Otto Dibelius of Germany on the importance of Christian unity. Asked about her assessment of the current ecumenical scene, she said, “We are obviously at a point of reassessment, of redirection. It is not clear where we go next. There is no question about our oneness; there are questions about how we express that oneness.” She said she hopes that organized ecumenism can draw on new experiences in worship, service, and fellowship taking place in informal, local groups of Christians.

The new Governing Board seems intent on copying the old-style NCC practice of issuing pronouncements on selected social issues. In addition to approving dialogue with the gay churchmen, the board passed proposals for a religious observance of the U. S. bicentennial in 1976, a North American conference on philanthropy the same year, and a meeting next June to study alternatives to incarceration. Also adopted were resolutions (1) supporting principles embodied in Senate Resolution 67, which seeks an end to nuclear weapons testing, (2) calling attention to current violations of human rights in Chile and the Soviet Union, in that order, (3) commending the forthcoming World Population Conference in Bucharest next year, noting that U. S. consumption of meat products “is based upon a prodigal use of the protein indispensable to humanity’s good health yet in short supply worldwide,” (4) urging full restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba, and (5) promising not to buy Farah slacks until the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America lift a boycott against the El Paso firm. The board ordered the drafting of a resolution opposing “deprogramming” (abduction and detention and the psychological pressuring of religious converts) as a threat to religious liberty.

In contrast to its straightforwardness on these issues, the board carefully avoided choosing sides in a resolution on the Middle East war. The statement merely urges the U. S. government to do what it can to bring an early end to the conflict, including an immediate mutual (with the Soviet Union) cessation of military aid. Representatives of the American Jewish Committee promptly criticized the resolution because it failed to support Israel.

The board got a report on the NCC presence at Wounded Knee and called for fund-raising efforts in behalf of Indians jailed as a result of the seventy-one day occupation. Several weeks earlier, the NCC withdrew a $25,000 bond it had provided for Carter Camp, chairman of the American Indian Movement, who had been arrested in the shooting of another AIM leader.

NCC president W. Sterling Cary warned at the outset there was “no assurance” that board decisions calling for new interchurch programs and the money to pay for them “will be taken seriously” by the member churches whose representatives make the decisions. This was another problem that restructure was supposed to solve.

A tip-off to the way things are going in the NCC may have been the board’s disposition of a $14,452 program whose initially stated goal was to develop “a new definition of ecumenism which provides the basis for broad inter-Christian and inter-religious participation.” After a brief study by one of its five sections, the board adopted a recommendation “that it approve the proposal with the following reformulation of its goal: ‘To explore the current trends in inter-Christian and inter-religious cooperation nationally and in local areas and to examine their implications for the National Council of Churches and its member bodies in their relations with other religious groups.’ ”

Service No. 41

“We are ‘God’s almost chosen people,’ ” said the congressman-clergyman, “the word ‘almost’ being necessary to save us from … fanatical nationalism … the word ‘chosen’ being useful to indicate our special role in history, our special calling in the world.”

The scene was the East Room of the White House, the occasion the forty-first worship service held there since President Nixon took office but the first in six months, and the speaker Republican William H. Hudnut, who pastored a United Presbyterian church in Indianapolis before being elected to Congress.

In the front row sat Vice President-designate Gerald Ford—nominated only thirty-six hours before—his wife, and two of their four children. The older two are away at school—including a son at Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

Hudnut’s sermon theme was the faith of Abraham Lincoln, and he used it to make some astute comments on the much-discussed topic of civil religion. He said that Lincoln’s concept, “This nation under God,” supplies “a corrective to the tendency to idolize the nation.… Lincoln was always conscious, as every truly religious person is, that his own country must stand before the Almighty’s bar of judgment.”

“I have heard democracy equated with Christianity and God’s cause with America’s,” Hudnut continued. He went on to speak of a series of “great differences”: “between worshiping God and domesticating him”; “between looking upon him as the Lord of all nations, and regarding him as the ally of one”; “between affirming ‘My country for God’ and boasting ‘God for my country’ ”; “between making ours a nation ‘under God’ and making a god of our nation”; “between humbly praying, as Lincoln did, that we may be on God’s side, and self-righteously asserting that he is on ours.”

Before preaching, Hudnut read portions of the twelfth chapter of Romans from the New English Bible. The thirty-five-minute service also included choral selections by an Episcopal youth group from Richmond, Virginia. Tom Lee, a Marine musician, played a Gulbransen organ owned by the White House.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

National Prayer Rally

In a long-planned—and timely—move, Campus Crusade’s Great Commission Prayer Crusade will hold a National Prayer Rally for women in Washington’s Constitution Hall November 14, with President Nixon’s wife as honorary chairman. So far, about 50,000 have attended prayer rallies in twenty other cities.

Third in a Series

The schempp decision explicitly makes four points about classroom engagement with religion and the Bible; it holds out the clear possibility, moreover, of their entry into a secular program of education in a way compatible with the First Amendment. It affirms:

1. “One’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.” This premise offers full opportunity for presenting the rise and growth of Judeo-Christian religion and for comparing and contrasting its special tenets and influence with those of other world religions.

2. “The Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.” The Court, therefore, did not rule against all reading of the Bible in the public schools; it ruled against Bible readings as part of a school-sponsored religious exercise. Studying the Bible is justified not simply because of its merits as literature but also for its historic qualities.

3. “Such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may … be effected consistent with the First Amendment.” The qualifications here stipulated are that study of the Bible or of religion must be (a) presented as part of a secular program of education and (b) presented objectively.

Before we go on to the fourth point in the Schempp decision bearing on religious concerns, it may be well to review the three points already mentioned and to ask what requirements they imply or impose for public in contrast to church-related education.

Public and private schools alike need to reassess their course offerings in view of the first point, which says that a complete education must include study of comparative religion or the history of religion in relation to the development of civilization. Both private and public education are free to study any and all religions, and to investigate a vast variety of religious phenomena world-wide, both past and present.

There is, moreover, no reason why church-related institutions and state institutions cannot teach such courses with equal academic respectability. It is true, of course, that church institutions are free to seek a faculty with a common religious identity and even to require their subscription to a doctrinal statement; church schools can also openly declare a posture of advocacy. It should be noted that some institutions that are only nominally religious do none of these things. The reference to advocacy, however, requires further comment. Many evangelical schools reject the implication that they are “special pleading” institutions that present alternatives only in “straw man” caricature, and that they do not examine and criticize their own positions. Although espousing a particular view, these schools see themselves, rather, as “faith-affirming” institutions. Academic sensitivity requires such institutions no less than the secular schools to protect the student’s right to hold another point of view without penalty.

Public schools readily proclaim their differences from church schools on the matter of advocacy. But any institution—and particularly a liberal-arts college—is a value-structured institution. Even if it does not openly declare its beliefs, it nonetheless has specific attitudes and practices, states of mind and mores that can be identified even where educators hesitate to formulate them explicitly.

In recent years, to be sure, diversities of background and conflicts of community values have made it increasingly difficult to formulate any statement of common beliefs and ideals; differences over values now deprive many institutions of a consensus on academic aims and of a covering philosophy of education. As campuses resign themselves to this plight, the notion gains currency that values are subjective options only, and that human autonomy and personal creativity are to be the basic determinants of social participation. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that this state of affairs involves no advocacy posture.

The distinctive attitude of public education toward religion must not be that public education is concerned more with other world religions than with the Judeo-Christian heritage. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition is still the most significant religious option for most American citizens. Furthermore, only in this Judeo-Christian context can our national heritage and cultural background be intelligibly understood. The American classroom cannot do its best to serve the people unless it illumines the religious and cultural background of the nation’s heritage and life, unless it deals with the religious options actually represented in the local community and classroom, and unless it assesses contemporary trends according to the ongoing sweep of history.

It is assuredly not the task of public education to engender personal religious decision. The role of the public institution should be to teach about religion, not to instill or to dislodge a particular religion. Yet it is noteworthy that in a day when the younger generation in America was widely thought to be lost to religious interests, the Jesus movement has enlisted hundreds of thousands of high school and college students. What does it say about public education that many of these students sat through high school courses in Western history without hearing the name of Jesus of Nazareth (and is that any less objectionable than sitting through a course in American history and hearing no reference to the black man)? Some high school, college, and university students now question the relevance of much of their classroom study to the spiritual and moral crisis of our times; large numbers of them attend non-credit Bible-study classes, determined to hear what the biblical writers say rather than what the twentieth-century critics say.

This column by the late Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYis reprinted from the January 29, 1965, issue.

“Because you have kept my word of patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth. I am coming soon; hold fast what you have” (Rev. 3:10, 11).

Whether we are living in the “last days” we do not know. We do know that we are living in days that try the souls of men, in days when, if it were possible, the very foundations would be shaken.

The spirit of lawlessness is abroad—mobs, demonstrations, protests, collusions of evil men to do evil, flagrant disregard for the law and resistance to those who would enforce it.

Violence, hatred, strife, and bloodshed are the order of the day. Contempt for God and man is so evident that even Christians would tremble for their own future were it not for one thing: the anchor of the soul, Jesus Christ and his eternal Gospel.

God tells us that such an hour of trial is coming, and he has promised those who are faithful to his Word in patient endurance, “I will keep you.” In him there is both peace and hope.

One of the most difficult truths for the Christian to grasp is the completeness of his own need and the completeness of God’s provision for that need.

More than a century ago these words, so relevant for us today, were written:

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

Today, in the midst of the tumult of a world that has rebelled against God and is rushing pell-mell toward judgment, the hope of the Christian rests solely on the word and work of God in the person of his Son, the presence of his Spirit, and the promises of his Word.

Not long ago, the newspapers carried pictures of the lifeless body of Dr. Paul Carlson, taken on the square at Stanleyville where he had fallen. As I looked at that peaceful face I could only think of the heroes of faith enumerated in the eleventh chapter of the book written to Hebrew Christians, those “of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb. 11:38). The most impressive thing was the expression of perfect peace on Paul Carlson’s face—a peace that the world can neither give nor take away, because it is the peace of God, beyond the understanding of man.

The lesson we so desperately need to learn is that all our hope rests in what Christ has done for us. Living as a Christian is a matter, not of “being good,” but of exercising the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. We can do nothing to merit this righteousness; it is the gift of God to those who believe.

The tremendous implications of this thought are difficult to grasp. God imputes the righteousness of his Son so that in his sight believers are covered as with a robe—sin blotted out and the perfection of his Son becoming our own.

The Chinese character for righteousness is a remarkable illustration of that thought. It consists of the character for a “lamb” above the character for the personal pronoun “me.” As God looks at me, a rotten sinner, he sees above me a lamb, his Son; he sees not me but righteousness—the righteousness of the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

During our Lord’s earthly ministry men began to turn away from him, going their own lost way. Jesus said to his disciples, “Will you also go away?” Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68, 69).

To us are given the words of eternal life, a life bestowed upon all who in childlike faith believe in and accept the redeeming work of Christ.

In our time iniquity is becoming increasingly bold; if it were possible, the faith of the elect would be shaken. We are confronted by those who call evil good and good evil, who defy every way of righteousness while they condone the works of Satan.

At such a time the Christian must keep himself unspotted from the world, a living witness to the transforming and keeping power of Christ.

The Christian needs to learn that he must appropriate to his own life the things provided in Christ. He must learn that being a Christian is not “being good” but having in him the goodness of Christ by His indwelling presence. The righteousness of a Christian is not what he himself does but what Christ has done and does through him.

A transformation of this kind requires three things: a humble heart, a willing mind, and an obedient will—the humility to admit one’s condition and need, a wisdom that comes as God’s gift, and a will to walk by faith.

The thought that God expects us not to do but to accept what he has done for us is overwhelming. All of us are so anxious to earn our salvation, to merit God’s approval, that we have some difficulty in accepting the fact that “our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” But unless we hold fast to this word of the completeness of Christ’s work, we will find ourselves floundering and foundering in the chaos of a world that has gone mad in its rebellion against God.

Stop, take a look, listen. These are days when the souls of men are being tried by the wickedness of the pride and rebellion we find all about us.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the perversion of Christianity into a new religion. This new religion is humanistic; it puts the physical and material welfare of man first. Even the Church seems more concerned about making the prodigal happy and comfortable in the far country than in bringing him back to his heavenly Father.

If you question this, take a look at multiplied programs for material and physical betterment that ignore completely man’s greatest need—the need of his soul for the cleansing, forgiveness, and redemption to be found in Christ and nowhere else.

In the midst of this world in turmoil, not only of action but also of outlook, how should the Christian live?

Most of us have seen the picture of a tiny bird asleep on the limb of a storm-tossed tree. The Christian also should exhibit a serenity of spirit, for he knows the God who has permitted the storm and the Christ who is the unshakable foundation.

Above all else, he should rest in the sure promises of God given to all who put their trust in him.