NEWS

Revival fires are burning in the prairie provinces of Canada (see December 3 issue, page 33), and some church leaders predict the movement will flare into a great spiritual awakening across the entire nation—making it Canada’s first nationwide revival in history.

“All these years I’ve been building my church, and now I’ve seen everything I built completely crumble. I saw my board members, my deacons, my Sunday-school teachers—the best people I had—all coming forward to get right with God.

“Then I saw God take that crumbled structure and build a real church, his church. It’s beautiful to behold.”

That is how pastor William L. McLeod of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, described the revival that began in his church in mid-October. It has spread to thousands of persons, to churches and Bible colleges in Regina, Winnepeg, Edmonton, Toronto, to towns like Moose Jaw and Swift Current.

It all began when evangelists Ralph and Lou Sutera, 37-year-old twins from Mansfield, Ohio, arrived at Ebenezer for a ten-day crusade that had been the subject of congregational prayer for two years. The Suteras brought with them a team of lay people who told what God had done during meetings in Prince George, British Columbia.

Ebenezer’s people crowded to the altar night after night, confessing their sins, voicing their praises, making amends, vowing renewed dedication, relating how God had given them personal spiritual victories.

“People throw arms around one another in genuine Christian brotherly love and concern,” observed a school principal who attends Ebenezer. “A person with a problem knows that all these people love him and are praying for him. To me it is an overwhelming manifestation of God’s love.”

One night Sam and Arnold Derkson, brothers who had not spoken to each other for two years, were reconciled; they sang a duet the next night. Husbands and wives testified how their faltering, loveless marriages were rejuvenated by the love of God. A woman whose husband had left her said she was on the verge of suicide until she committed her life to Christ. A few nights later her husband was on his knees at the altar, and the two were reconciled.

People from many denominations began pouring in, and soon a dozen churches were cooperating. The University Drive Christian and Missionary Alliance Church canceled its annual missionary convention to participate. The nightly meetings continued through October and November and were moved to the city’s largest sanctuary, which belongs to the United Church of Canada. Thousands jammed into double sessions Sunday afternoons and evenings, with hundreds spilling into an overflow sanctuary across town. On the last Sunday of November more than 3,000 attended double services in the city’s 1,800-seat civic auditorium.

“Afterglow” meetings, lasting into the wee hours, are held in the various churches. Regular Sunday-morning services in the churches go on for hours, following the same pattern as the larger gatherings. There is little singing, sometimes no preaching, but much prayer and sharing, intense but not ecstatic or charismatic.

Pastors and church officials say the revival has brought unity to the churches, with virtually every evangelical pastor in the area participating. “Our churches were united organizationally at the beginning of this revival, but we’re united organically now,” commented pastor Walter Boldt of the University Drive Alliance church this month. “We’ve got a lot of follow-up to do, and we need to do it together.”

Although theologically liberal ministers have all but ignored the revival, many of their members are involved. “I couldn’t handle so much enthusiasm,” remarked a prominent liberal clergyman.

The revival has been contagious. People have come from all over Canada to observe and participate, in many cases sparking revival back home. Young people from Golden Prairie upon their return home called a special meeting at their church, staged a skit depicting the deadness and apathy of the church, then told the congregation about their own new commitment to Christ. “It worked!” reported one. “Now we have a Saskatoon revival in Golden Prairie.”

Chaplain W. Gordon Searle of Toronto’s Central Baptist Seminary arrived skeptical about what was happening, but went home revived. At his invitation McLeod and a team staked by a Saskatoon businessman flew to Toronto and related their experiences to the seminary’s eighty students. Two full-day sessions of spiritual outpouring later, the students themselves began sending out teams to scores of Toronto area churches. At one CMA church there were all-night services for a week. Seminary teams carried the revival to churches in Hamilton, North Bay, and even Pontiac, Michigan.

“In thirty-five years of ministry I have never witnessed such a spiritual movement as this,” remarked Central’s president, Dr. Donald Loveday.

Similar sentiments were uttered by presidents Kenneth Hanna of the 150-student Winnepeg Bible College and Alvin Martin of the 225-student Canadian Bible College (CBC) in Regina after revival teams stirred their schools. “This revival is not personality-centered or program-centered,” observed Martin, who also said he was impressed by how the revival reached below the ecstasy level “clear down to a person’s will.”

After a stirring extended session at CBC, many students hit the streets to witness, circulate news of the revival, and invite townspeople to nightly meetings that began November 16 and were still going on early this month in a CMA church and the civic hall.

Hanna said that his students had reported numerous conversions in outreach efforts and were already spiritually high when the Saskatoon team arrived in Winnepeg, but that the ensuing revival nevertheless uprooted deep problems. The Suteras were to open a community-wide crusade in that city December 6.

Revival also spread to the 120-student Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ontario, where chapel services overflowed. Meanwhile, pastoral-lay teams traveled from Saskatoon to other areas.

A team led by pastor Boldt met with people gathered for an all-night prayer meeting in an Edmonton church. “The same thing happened,” he said. “People were struck down in deep conviction. They trembled and wept in remorse over their sinfulness.” Boldt was invited to speak—and give an invitation—at a business convention the next day in Edmonton. And revival flared at Beulah Alliance Church in that city with small-group afterglow sessions lasting past midnight. Boldt tells about a doctor who phoned a dentist friend at 1 A.M. and said, “I have to get right with God. Will you pray with me?”

Further south, at Wetaskiwin, Alberta, a church was already packed out when Boldt and his team arrived in town. People began weeping and coming forward to the altar during the opening song, says Boldt.

“There is such brokenness and weeping in these meetings that we’re all carrying boxes of Kleenex along with our Bibles,” he adds.

There is ample evidence that the revival is more than a tear-drenched catharsis or passing spiritual high. The movement has received little media attention, but the Saskatoon Star Phoenix noted that merchants were besieged by repentant shoplifters wanting to make restitution. Police noticed a sudden decline in night-time crime and brawls involving young people. Principals and teachers remarked about the dramatic changes in student behavior.

Two deacons of a Regina church said to have been feuding for twelve years forgave each other and were reconciled. Family life improved for many. Numerous youths testified that they had kicked drugs and turned on to Jesus during the revival, and that Jesus had given them a new love for their parents. A father spoke out: “I used to literally hate my son because of his long hair. Now I couldn’t care less about hair. The Lord has given me a love for him that goes way beyond things like that.”

A troubled Saskatoon high-school teacher said he found the peace of God at one of the meetings, adding: “I used to take tranquilizers. That used to be my saviour. Without them I’d just be such a bundle of nerves that teaching was agony. Now I have such a deep peace that I roll out of bed singing in the morning.”

Pastor McLeod’s 17-year-old son Timothy declared he was through with play acting, accepted Christ, and proceeded to witness to classmates. Boldt’s teen-age son Wayne saw five of the “seven impossibles” among his classmates receive Christ during the first week of revival. Recently they have been traveling as a testimony team to churches and schools elsewhere.

The generation gap never had a chance. Young people declined to be segregated into their own afterglow groups. It was common to see youths and middle-aged people praying together and counseling one another.

Denominational barriers dissolved; doctrinal differences were ignored. Love prevailed. Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Nazarenes, and others prayed, wept, and shared together as if they had been in the same family for years.

Crusade rulebooks have been set aside in favor of flexibility, says Ralph Sutera. There are no structures or schedules, “thus freeing the Holy Spirit.” There are no counselors; instead, volunteers are asked to pray with those who express needs. Leadership and preaching chores are shared among the evangelists, ministers, and lay people “as the Spirit leads.”

Teacher Leslie Tarr of the Toronto seminary sees a three-fold emphasis in the revival: self-crucifixion, the Holy Spirit’s ministry, and the lordship of Christ. He says it is Canada’s biggest revival to date, preceded by only three other major occurrences: an eighteenth-century revival in the Maritime Provinces, a nineteenth-century movement in the Ottawa Valley, and a happening in Hamilton, Ontario, early in this century.

Baptist executive David Clink, one of the many clergymen whose lives have been deeply affected in the current revival, says: “I think that this is God’s hour for Canada. We’ve never had a nationwide revival, but I sense that this could be it.”

Although there have been many conversions, there has been no organized outreach to non-Christians. Crusade spokesmen say this will be a natural by-product when believers are revived and right with God.

Last Respects

On a gray, chilly day, the last of November, J. Howard Pew was paid final tribute as an extraordinary Christian layman whose life had influenced three generations. Pew died November 27 in his Ardmore, Pennsylvania, home at the age of 89 (see also editorial, page 22). The funeral service was held in the Ardmore Presbyterian Church, where he had served as a ruling elder. The large stone structure was filled to capacity.

In keeping with Pew’s personal wishes, the thirty-five minute service was simple and restrained. The minister, Dr. William Faulds, uttered but one superlative in his eulogy. He declared that it could be said of Pew, as it was said of Herbert Hoover, whom Pew greatly admired: “He was not capable of a dishonest act.”

Faulds recalled that Pew himself had helped to plan the service (“he left few things unplanned”), suggesting Scripture readings. He quoted Pew as telling him with a characteristic twinkle, “I’ve never told you what to preach, and I won’t now, but don’t say too much.”

Faulds quoted Psalm 112, which sets forth principles for philanthrophy. Pew had been a leading benefactor of Christian causes, particularly those relating to education and literature. He was also one of the world’s most respected businessmen, but because he shunned recognition for his generosity and enterprise, he was not a noted public figure.

Pew had asked evangelist Billy Graham to participate in the funeral service. Graham read several psalms, including the first and twenty-third, and gave a prayer.

Pew and Graham played leading roles in the establishment of CHRISTIANITY TODAY in 1956. Both have served on the magazine’s board of directors through its life.

Everything You Always Wanted To Know?

Research on Religious Development: A Project of the Religious Education Association, edited by Merton P. Strommen (Hawthorn, 1971, 904 pp., $24.95), is reviewed by Kenneth O. Gangel, director, School of Christian Education, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Here it is! Everything you’ve always wanted to know about religious development but were afraid to ask because if the answer came, you might have to plow through 904 pages. Sponsored by the Religious Education Association and funded by Lilly Endowment, the project represented in these pages culminates what the editor calls “a ten year program of activity [symbolizing] the sustained interest of the Religious Education Association in bringing religious education under the discipline of empirical study and evaluation.” The result is a volume heavy in size, price, style, content, and weight (approximately three pounds).

The central problem of this production may be at once its greatest strength and most seductive weakness. Early in the project the editorial committee “decided against adopting an official definition of ‘religion’ which could serve as a reference point for all the chapters. Rather, the committee asked each author to declare his own point of view and interpret his data accordingly.”

Martin Marty’s attempts at defining religion in chapter two seem to substantiate the decision of the editorial committee. Though written in the belletristic Mr. Marty’s typically brilliant style, the chapter is an exercise in evanescence, offering in conclusion a definition of religion as a cultural system attempted by Clifford Geertz in 1968:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

But after listing this definition, Marty spends the next fourteen lines apologizing for it and telling us that given another time, place, and set of circumstances, Geertz would have written something considerably different.

Herein lies the weakness. Twenty-two authors supposedly dealing with the same subject, yet free to define that subject as they choose, may really be playing blind man and elephant. In some cases, the contributors offer us no scintilla of definition but plunge directly into the research gathered about the nonentity they are describing. In most cases, a distinctly relative conceptualization of religion is adopted, excluding even Marty’s scant genuflexion to a propositional norm: “Pure religion and undefiled is that which depends on the isolated person’s hold on the infinite—an experience which theoretically could be the same at all times in all places and cultures.” Many of the contributors, writing out of the theological vacuum of contemporary psychology, focus exclusively on a naturalistic approach, a complete denial of the supernatural component of biblical Christianity.

This is not a book for all seasons or, for that matter, for all people. Scholars and students will find valuable summaries of research in various areas, and the book’s thoroughness and accuracy will appeal to the academic mind. But the statistical jargon can communicate only to the initiated. Perhaps the best way to praise the virtues and expose the flaws of this work is to analyze it by sections (there are six) with a word about the value of each section for selected groups of Christian leaders.

Part I is entitled simply “Religion and Research” and consists of three introductory chapters by Bertocci, Marty, and Dittes. Bertocci’s chapter is an extremely helpful analysis of the religious conceptions of ten psychological philosophers. The section on Maslow is a distinct contribution to the chapter and the total volume. His frightening conclusion in view of the selected contributors to this book is that “in the area of the psychology of religion, psychologists may be likened to fishermen throwing their lines into an unexplored lake. What fish they catch depends upon the nature of the hook and of the bait used.” As mentioned before, Marty is saddled with the task of doing something about the problem of definition. Dittes identifies “two types of believers”—those for whom religion is a “thoughtful commitment” and those for whom religion is a “formalized and external response.” The initial 106 pages, then, provide helpful general information that could be useful to most professional Christian leaders, but particularly professors of biblical and related studies at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Part II carries the amazingly broad heading, “Personal and Religious Factors in Religious Development.” Of the five chapters, this reviewer found Lawrence Little’s treatment of the role of religion in public education most scintillating. The section on “Religion in Public Education and Philosophies of Education” is a beautiful example of organizing and capsulizing a mass of material. Little, however, treats Donald Bole’s The Bible, Religion, and the Public Schools but offers no mention of Bole’s later book, The Two Swords. Other omissions include no references to the Religious Instruction Association of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Educational Communication Association, located in Indianapolis. Leaders in parochial education can’t afford to overlook chapter seven by Greely and Gockel on “The Religious Effects of Parochial Education.” The three studies analyzed all converge on the family as the strategic agent in the socializing process but recognize that parochial-school education is a positive factor, though secondary. Conclusion: “When the orientation of the family is religious, then the impact of outside religious factors (e.g. parochial education) is minimized except to reinforce what the home has already established.”

The analysts in Part III examine the research on “Religion. Personality, and Psychological Health.” James Dittes of Yale University trundles through almost nine pages of bibliographical data to conclude that “religion is popular among those who need it,” and Becker divorces any necessary linkage between religion and mental health. Becker’s chapter provides a worthy section on theory, and his definition of religion is perhaps the best in the entire volume: “For me, religion is that set of human behaviors in which the concerns of man are related to God—The Holy Creator, The Divine Will, or the Ultimate Ground of Being.” All pastors should read “Psychological Characteristics of Religious Professionals” to see what makes them tick—or better yet, how they got wound up in the first place.

Chapter fourteen on crisis religious experience may be the apogee of the volume. Clark is willing to face the tough issues as he tackles conversion, mysticism, and drug-induced religious states. He also has the theological sensitivity (and sense) to make room for a supernatural dimension. Moberg’s chapter on religious practices and a collective effort treating motivation and religious behavior are both pristine inclusions; serious students of parish ministry will want to spend some time in them.

The fifth section of the book treats “Religious Development by Age Grouping.” Research dealing with the religious understanding of children and youth is, in the opinion of one contributor, at a stage where “we seem to be coming to the end of the qualitative descriptive phase” and “to be moving toward the quantitative experimental stage of inquiry.” Havighurst and Keating treat the evangelically oriented research of Zuck and Getz in their chapter on religion of youth and emphasize the need for further research among “three definable alienated groups” that appeared during the 1960s: hippies, radical social activists, and the uncommitted. Parker’s ten-page chart on the changes of religious beliefs during college avoids the lineal marsh-sloughing that characterizes so much research reporting. Section five could be read with benefit by many advanced lay leaders of the church’s age-group educational programs as well as by the professional professoriate.

The final section is simply entitled “Research in Religious Education” and consists of just two chapters focusing on “program development” and “problems.” In surveying denominational “in-house” research since 1960, Sibley selects three descriptive and three evaluative studies as models for future research. They bear examination by all denominational educational leaders. His list of “characteristics of good program research” is compact and comprehensible. Barton’s final chapter on problems will appeal only to the professional researchers, but to him it is given to write the last paragraph of this monumental volume. Says he:

Perhaps more important now even than the design and execution of new studies would be the creation for the field of religious research of some system for either centralized or decentralized storage and retrieval of data from past and current studies so that scholars could carry out new kinds of analysis on it.

Not a bad idea. Graduate students of the religious world, awake! To the task!

Commentary On Man

Man: God’s Eternal Creation, by R. Laird Harris (Moody, 1971, 190 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Dwight E. Acomb, Fresno, California.

The Bible is not a textbook per se for the precise disciplines of modern scholarship, yet it does make noteworthy contributions to many by direct reference and implication. For example, though it is not appreciated by anthropologists in general, the Scriptures give a divine commentary on the nature of man and his relationships. In Man: God’s Eternal Creation, R. Laird Harris, faculty dean and professor of Old Testament at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, recognizes this and brings Old Testament evidence to bear upon the technical study of anthropology. This volume is both helpful and controversial. In eight chapters Dr. Harris touches upon the nature and origin of man, his culture, worship and social controls established by God for Israel, warfare, and future life.

As the title shows, Harris believes that man resulted from a special creative act of God. Man was formed in the image of God and is a spiritual, moral, and rational being, therefore not limited by time or space—in short, an eternal creation who will continue either in fellowship or in antagonism with God into the future life. The non-material part of man (or soul) is presumed on the basis of the concepts of the “image of God,” the “spirit” of man, “heart,” and sonship with God, but not on the basis of the Hebrew term nephesh. In contrast he suggests that polyphyletic evolution need not be a problem to a fair biblical interpretation of the creation of subhuman life. Physical similarities can be explained by DNA instead of common ancestry.

Harris finds little evidence from human fossil remains for the upward evolution of man. However, he allows for “some evidence for a wider variation within the human pattern than is seen today.” Radioactive dating techniques and the practice of relating early human forms with the supposed four glacieral periods are legitimately questioned. He thinks that the dates of fossil man should be reduced to two-fifths of their commonly held ages. Suggesting 10,000 years ago as the date for the flood (on the basis of sedimentary core samples from the Caribbean and the Pacific Northwest), he assumes a reestablishment in accordance with accepted archaeological time designations of certain pre-deluge capabilities and occupations like metal craftsmanship and functions of urban life.

In recent days the Ugaritic and Psalm studies of Michael Dahood have reopened the discussion of resurrection in the Old Testament. The positive nature of this inquiry confirms Harris’s conviction and that of most conservative Christians. However, many readers will question the author’s position that she’ol should be equated with the grave. It is more probable that she’ol refers to the place of departed spirits, which was pictured metaphorically by the ancients as a tomb cut out of bedrock.

Man: God’s Eternal Creation is an interesting book, well worth reading. The addition of a preface to state the overall view and purpose of the book and an index would increase its usability. Its brevity imposes limits on depth of discussion, but does not keep the author from drawing attention to ideas deserving consideration. There is plenty of room for disagreement. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the volume is Dr. Harris’s awareness of the importance of Genesis 4–11 to the study of anthropology. Evangelical scholars need to pursue this further.

For Scholars Only

First and Second Kings: A Commentary, by John Gray (Westminster, 1970, 802 pp., $15), is reviewed by Donald J. Wiseman, professor of Assyrology, University of London, England.

Professor Gray of Aberdeen University has made a fine job of revising and expanding his massive commentary on the books of Kings (the first edition, 1964, is to be discarded since it was riddled with errors, mainly typographical—a misfortune that hit the first volume of the New International Commentary’s Isaiah in 1965).

There can be no question of the need for a full-scale commentary on these historical books since philological advances and fresh archaeological discoveries render most earlier treatments inadequate for the needs of advanced students. Gray very fairly presents different views held of the chronology and historical problems (e.g., Sennacherib’s campaign) and provides extensive explanatory and philological notes. For these reasons alone this book must largely replace J. A. Montgomery and H. S. Gehman’s Book of Kings (1951) as the standard academic work.

Unlike the majority of the commentaries in this same “Old Testament Library” series, which have largely relied on translations of German scholarship, Gray repeatedly strikes out on his own, but leaning—some will say too heavily—on his expertise in Ugaritic and Arabic. He overstresses the bearing of the Qumran fragments of Kings (and parallels in Isaiah) as supporting the Greek (Lucian) text. This has led him to changes in the text and thus in his very literal translation (in itself helpful to Bible translators without a knowledge of Hebrew), which heads up each section. This will not be widely accepted.

While there are passages of theological discussion, this does not emerge as a main emphasis in this treatment of the crucial period of Hebrew history from the zenith of the united monarchy under David and Solomon to its fall under divine judgment in 587 B.C.

Gray takes as his basic critical stance that “the Deuteronomistic book of Kings is a pre-exilic compilation which underwent some post-exilic redaction and expansion.” He finds a predominantly pre-Deuteronomistic prophetic source for much of the history of the northern kingdom and argues toward the genuineness of a number of disputed prophetic incidents, including the “Elijah-Saga.” Many will object to such subjective observations as “Elisha and the rude boys of Bethel … a puerile tale without serious point” for which no discussion of the moral or ethical implications is given.

This volume will be of essential use to teachers and students working on the Hebrew text or engaged in literary studies. For them it is more worthwhile than C. F. Burney’s Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Kings (1918, reprint 1970). It is not a book for the average preacher’s shelves. He may well get inspiration still from earlier works like C. F. Keil’s The Book of Kings (1872) in the recently reprinted commentary series by Keil and Delitzsch (omitted from the bibliography here, though at a number of points it anticipates Gray’s conclusions).

Now that we have an abundant supply of Bible atlases, dictionaries, and mini-commentaries, it is to be hoped that fully equipped scholars, including evangelicals, will not shy away from the arduous task of writing major works that will face the text and all its associated problems with the aim of making Scripture clear to the plain man.

Newly Published

Imagination and the Spirit, edited by Charles A. Huttar (Eerdmans, 496 pp., $9.95). A stimulating festschrift for Clyde Kilby (The Christian World of C. S. Lewis), including essays by Tom Howard, Owen Barfield, and Calvin Linton.

Early History of the Middle East, edited by I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, and N. G. L. Hammond (Cambridge, 1,058 pp., $23.50). The period from about 3000 to 1750 B.C. is authoritatively covered in this major revision of a standard work. Issued as Volume I, Part 2 of The Cambridge Ancient History.

Matthew, by W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann (Doubleday, 363 pp., $8). Latest addition to the Anchor Bible series.

Worldly Goods, by James Gollin (Random House, 531 pp., $10). Long and thorough research by a non-Catholic on the state of the American Catholic Church, its wealth and poverty. May help to dispel some myths, at least among those willing to listen.

New Testament Word Studies, two volumes, by John Albert Bengel (Kregel, 980 pp., $29.95). Originally done in 1742 by one of the few master commentators in Christian history.

Memo for the Underground, by Ted Ward (Creation House, 128 pp., $3.95). Short observations on topics such as the Church, worship, and communication for those who take Jesus seriously.

In Defense of People, by Richard Neuhaus (Macmillan, 315 pp., $6.95), and Nature—Garden or Desert?, by Eric C. Rust (Word, 150 pp., $4.95). Neuhaus, while believing that the ecology crisis is real, warns against some radical responses to these problems. Sane, witty, well-written argument. Rust, however, breaks no new ground.

I Believe Because … by Batsell Barrett Baxter (Baker, 284 pp., paperback, $3.95). An ordinary introduction to traditional Christian arguments for belief in God.

The Westminster Dictionary of Church History, edited by Jerald C. Brauer (Westminster, 887 pp., $17.50). A major work well deserving of a place in many private and all institutional theological libraries.

Before I Forget, by Wilbur M. Smith (Moody, 304 pp., $5.95). One of the best-known figures in contemporary American evangelical circles reminisces, rather selectively, on his experiences.

When God Was Black, by Bob Harrison (Zondervan, 160 pp., paperback, $1.95). The moving story of his life by one of today’s leading black evangelists.

Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, thirteen volumes, compiled by Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr. (Word, $179.95 until Dec. 31, 1971, then $199.95). Those who like to read sermons will enjoy this set. By far most of the selections are from the last 200 years.

Churches and How They Grow, by M. Wendell Belew (Broadman, 144 pp., $3.95). This book, by a Southern Baptist home-missions executive, is based on studies of 200 growing churches (mostly Southern Baptist) located in a variety of settings from rural to inner city. Encouraging news indeed and some insight into special problems, but short on the “how.”

A Gift of Doubt, by Robert H. Pope (Prentice-Hall, 143 pp., $4.95). A month-by-month account of the author’s six-year struggle with Christianity, a struggle still continuing.

The Culture of Unbelief, edited by Rocco Caporale and Antonio Grumelli (University of California, 303 pp., $10). Thorough coverage of the Rome Symposium, March 22–27, 1969, including essays by such men as Harvey Cox, Martin Marty, and Jean Danielou.

God on Broadway, by Jerome Ellison (John Knox, paperback, $2.45). The interest in God at the box office is fully explored in this timely book.

Crossroads in Missions, edited by Arthur Glasser (William Carey Library [South Pasadena, Calif. 91030], 897 pp., paperback, $9.95). Five significant books issued over the last decade are now available in one volume: Missionary Nature of the Church, Missionary Go Home, Responsible Church and Foreign Mission, On the Growing Edge of the Church, and Missionary Between the Times.

The Life and Writings of Francis Makemie, by Boyd S. Schlenther (Presbyterian Historical Society, 287 pp., $6), and The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, edited by Phillips P. Moulton (Oxford, 336 pp., $10.50). Well-edited collections of the works of two very important colonial figures. Makemie was the founder of American Presbyterianism and Woolman was a leading Quaker mystic and preacher.

Beauty for Ashes, by James P. Leynse (Good News, 320 pp., $5.95). An out-of-the-ordinary missionary story about China.

The Ground of Evil-doing: An Inquiry Into the Limits of Man’s Power to Act, by E. Hans Freund (Christopher, 321 pp., $8.95). Attempts to bring new insights to the question of man’s wrong-doing. The book is free from much of the abstractions (undefined) that accompany some modern philosophy.

Poetry, Language, Thought, by Martin Heidegger (Harper & Row, 229 pp., $7.95). For Heidegger, poetry, a highly specialized use of language, “opens up the realm of truth” and helps us arrive at the meaning of “being.”

Channing: The Reluctant Radical, by Jack Mendelsohn (Little, Brown, 308 pp., $8.95), and How Shall They Hear Without a Preacher?: The Life of Ernest Fremont Tittle, by Robert Moats Miller (University of North Carolina, 524 pp., $12.50). Two prominent pastors, a nineteenth-century Unitarian and a twentieth-century Methodist, are the subjects of admiring biographies that view them in the context of their times.

The greek word for “witness” is marturia and denotes one who testifies to the truth. For many early Christians this testimony brought death, and the word came to mean one who bears witness at the expense of his life.

God sent his Son into the world to bear witness to the truth, but he was rejected by the majority and crucified, only to rise in triumph from the dead.

Stephen gave a Spirit-empowered witness to the truth and then was stoned to death; but his witness was triumphant and glorious, even with his dying breath.

The Apostle Paul witnessed to the truth of the Gospel by means of the special revelation he had received direct from his risen Lord. He, too, sealed his witness by a martyr’s death, but through that witness there emerged the Church of the living God.

Traditional history of the early Church states that all the apostles eventually filled martyrs’ graves after they had faithfully witnessed to the death and resurrection of our Lord.

From its beginning the Church has had a succession of martyrs, men who have unflinchingly confessed their faith in Christ only to have their witness become the occasion for a cruel death. And it may be that in our own generation the number of believers to die for their faith equals or surpasses that of any comparable period in history.

But there has come about a subtle change within the Church. Instead of exalting Jesus Christ and the implications of his death and resurrection, energies are now being diverted to manipulating the Church for largely materialistic and socialistic aims; or, on the part of those who take issue with this position, there is a tendency to leave the Church because a particular plan or line of reasoning has been voted down by ecclesiastical associates.

Just what was implied when our Lord told his disciples that they were to be his witnesses? Was their success to be determined by the number of those who heard? Was it to depend on results the world could see? Was their witness to be judged by victory or by faithfulness? In other words, did our Lord commit to his followers something that would be successful as the world judges success, or were they simply to witness to the truth and leave the results entirely in his hands?

That the Lord Jesus Christ will be the ultimate victor we know to be true. That some day he will be recognized as King of kings and Lord of lords is a promise he will surely fulfill. That some day every knee will bow before him and every tongue confess him as Lord (some in fear and some in adoration) is not to be questioned.

But the practical concern for every Christian today has to do with his responsibility to witness to and live for the One who has redeemed him.

I think that perhaps we Christians sometimes adopt positions and attitudes that gravely confuse the issue. We are inclined to forget that even while we live in the world we are, from the standpoint of the world, “aliens and strangers.” I wonder if we are not too often inclined to think of this world and its institutions as permanent, rather than transient. I also wonder if we are not inclined to forget that this is a lost world, standing under the just condemnation of God and headed for ultimate destruction. And I think we are inclined to forget that Satan is the prince of this world and that his ultimate end has been clearly foretold.

In the midst of such conditions and such a world the Christian is told to “witness.” He is to witness to the truth of God’s revelation in Christ. He is to affirm by word the validity of the gospel message and by deed the reality of Christ’s redemption. In fact, the weakness of the Church in every generation has been the failure of individual Christians to “witness” by these two means. And unquestionably the most effective testimony for Jesus Christ is that of changed lives.

That the Gospel is being distorted or denied today makes it all the more necessary for Christians to show what it really is. Jesus said the gospel witness was a determining factor in God’s timetable when he said, “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony [witness] to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).

We have been told of things which will take place, and even now are taking place, in the world. “There will be more wars and rumors of wars”; “nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” False prophets will arise and lead many astray. Wickedness will be multiplied, and because of the intensity and pervasiveness of evil “most men’s love will grow cold” (Matt. 24:6–14).

Under such conditions our witness to the saving and keeping power of Jesus Christ is of prime importance. Our witness may be ridiculed as “irrelevant” and rejected, but how it is received is not our responsibility. We are to witness and leave the results to God, remembering that it is the Holy Spirit who waters the seed. Ours is the planting, and if we fail at that we have failed in our primary task as Christians.

A Christian’s witness is, of course, the spoken word of the Gospel. But it is more than that; it is consistent living. This consistency means exhibiting the fruits of the indwelling Spirit, which are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22, 23). By this God-devised and God-implemented standard, are we bearing a good witness for our Lord?

The Apostle Paul describes the effect on others of a genuine Christian life: “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:14–16).

The witness to the possession of eternal life is a testimonial to the saving and keeping power of Jesus Christ, and this evidence is greatly needed in the world in which we live. The greatest deterrent to such a witness is an attempt to live the Christian life by the world’s standards.

Preaching the Word is an absolute necessity. Clear demonstration of the change that regeneration brings about is also vital. How great the damage caused by inconsistency on the part of Christians! This is not an appeal for perfectionism, for in this life there is no such thing. But it is a plea that we demonstrate the presence of the living Christ in our lives, and that when we fail him—as we all do—we show that we have a Source of appeal to whom we can turn for forgiveness and strength.

US vs. THEM

There we were, sitting in front of the television watching professional football and sipping Cokes. Potato chips, onion dip, cookies, peanuts, and fruitcake were all ready, in case starvation should threaten us during the game. Suddenly our team intercepted the ball and scored.

My wife jumped to her feet, grabbed a copper cow bell from the side table, shook it vigorously, and shouted, “We’re ahead!”

I sat there struck dumb for a moment. The sound of an old-fashioned cow bell suddenly being rung with fervor next to your left ear is enough to dumbfound anyone. When the power of speech returned I pointed out to my wife that “we” hadn’t done anything but get ahead by another couple of pounds.

“You know what I mean,” she said. And indeed I do. We all seem to need to identify with some group. It gives us a sense of belonging and helps us know who we are.

When the first Volkswagens began to appear on the American scene after World War II you would sometimes see VW drivers honk and wave madly at one another, creating an informal fellowship of drivers who regarded themselves as a bit smarter than the average American.

And where would that average American be without the country club or his political party to remind him who he is?

If we didn’t have women’s lib, how would the women of today know who they are?

Blacks have their identity affirmed by a number of secular and religious caucuses.

It seems to me that all these identifications are relatively harmless. They can be assumed or dropped at will or treated with whatever degree of seriousness we wish to give them.

There is one identification that has the potential of getting you into a lot of trouble. It was once called to my attention by the editor of a conservative religious magazine. I had faulted him for being judgmental. I argued heatedly that we must not condemn others but must realize that we are sinners too and identify with the sinner.

“Agreed, we’re all sinners,” he replied. “But why not identify with Christ?”

Now that identification can get you into all sorts of problems. It gets in the way of our normal human identifications based on such reasonable factors as money, status, race, education, and sex.

Watch out for that one.

NO COMPETING LEVELS

Your suggestion of an Evangelical Education Congress (Editorials, “Settling Educational Priorities,” Oct. 22) is wise and timely. It would be good for Christian school educators who serve God on the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels to define the challenges of our day, and to seek solutions.

Although the major growth is taking place on the elementary school level, I do not view any of the three levels as being in competition. The Church needs all schools which are genuinely Christian in their basic philosophy and objectives.

Perhaps an Education Congress would draw these levels together and lead to greater cooperation, and greater finance, within the church. God is moving in Christian education today, but we need to work in unity.

Headmaster

The Delaware County Christian School

Newton Square, Pa.

A CURIOUS SCHOLAR?

Regarding “A Curious Anniversary” by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Oct. 22): it is “strange and regrettable” (to use the author’s words) that a person with such fine academic credentials would write and publish an article centered about an event that he apparently misunderstands and investigated only superficially. I refer to his allegation that the Episcopal Church is banishing its Thirty-Nine Articles. He jumps to this conclusion simply on the basis that they are not included in the trial liturgy. I assume that he refers to the publication “Services for Trial Use” which contains “authorized alternatives to Prayer Book Services.” The preface to the work gives the following explanation of its purpose (italics mine):

These forms of worship were prepared by the Standing Liturgical Commission in partial fulfillment of the Plan for Prayer Book Revision adopted by the General Convention in 1967. They are offered for trial use throughout the Church as alternatives to the corresponding services in The Book of Common Prayer, for study and for use in situations of actual worship, with a view to their further development and elaboration. They are not, at this stage, proposed as amendments to, or as substitutes for, the services in the Prayer Book [page v].

The “Services for Trial Use” book did not intend to include all of the components of the presently authorized Prayer Book but simply offers trial “forms of worship” in “partial fulfillment of the Plan for Prayer Book Revision.” As its title clearly states, the book contains only “services for trial use”.…

Perhaps a more important point is that Bromiley apparently does not understand that the Episcopal Church is a creedal church, not a confessional one. Its standard of faith is the Nicene Creed (which remains, by all means, in the trial services), not a confession such as the Thirty-Nine Articles. I suggest that Mr. Bromiley do his homework; … the scholar should thoroughly investigate his subject.

Norman, Okla.

A CASE OF FAILURE?

I read with interest the recent articles written by Elmer Towns and James Davey (“Big Churches? Yes!” and “Big Churches? No!,” Nov. 5) discussing the relative merits of the large and small Sunday school. It appears to me Davey fails to make a case for the ideal Sunday school having an attendance of between 400 and 600.

In the first place, Davey does not rely upon Scripture for his argument. He fails to include a comprehensive report of the Book of Acts church of Jerusalem, which of necessity must be considered in any such discussion. Davey writes as though the ideal attendance of 400 to 600 was somehow divinely inspired; yet the truth is the entire argument raises up socio-economic factors that relate only to the U. S. economic and social conditions. I could not help but wonder if he would apply the same arguments to churches in Peru, the Philippine Islands, or Korea.

Towns’s article was a supportive article that relates the advantages of a larger church. Davey’s article is a negative article that primarily discusses the detrimental effects of a large church. In my judgment Davey’s article is a narrow, unresearched, and narrowly stereotyped one within the confines of denominational standards of Sunday-school growth. The contents of this thoughtless, unimaginative, stereotyped approach to Sunday-school will further contribute to the current decline of the denominational Sunday school. I would invite Davey to visit the Kansas City Baptist Temple and see in action the multiple ministries to which Towns alludes. He would find that we are able to meet the varied needs of urban America more effectively than the small, defeated church.

Kansas City Baptist Temple

Kansas City, Mo.

I believe that the articles were wrongly titled. They should have been entitled, “Big Churches, How Big?” From my point of view, nothing was said about small churches at all, unless it was to say that churches with less than 400 people are not really churches (or at least are not worth mentioning).

I believe that churches with even less than 100 people are really churches and that they are worth mentioning. I am a pastor of such a church which is a growing, active church. We have an adequate building for our present needs. It is well kept and attractive. We have had people from a church of 2,000 members praise our facilities. The church pays its pastor an adequate salary. One-fourth of its budget goes to missionary activity outside the church. We minister to our immediate community on a regular basis through a Dial-a-Devotion ministry and a weekly paid article in the newspaper. We are waiting to extend both of these ministries to our “Judaea.” Our people are involved in nine home Bible studies as a means of reaching the lost in our various neighborhoods, along with personal witnessing and passing out tracts.

We believe we will keep growing in our rural community. We will have more people and will need larger facilities. But we’re a living church now and are excited about what the Lord is doing in our “small small” church.

Calvary Evangelical Free Church

Spring Grove, Minn.

“Jesus chose Paul, who was highly educated, for spreading the gospel to the Gentiles. He later raised up Peter Waldo, a successful businessman, to keep His truth alive during the Middle Ages. In these last days WHEN THE GOSPEL MUST GO AROUND THE WORLD, Jesus chose a man amply trained in the advertising and business fields to shoulder the mission—HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG.”¹A True History of the True Church, by Herman L. Hoeh, Ambassador College, 1959, p. 26.

Thus is Herbert W. Armstrong presented as a modern Paul divinely appointed to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth before the wrath of God’s judgment is visited upon it.

According to Armstrong, he and the Worldwide Church of God are “merely poor human instruments in the very Work of the Almighty Living God, preparing the WAY! Even now, this Work is changing the lives of thousands every year. Soon, under the world-ruling Government of God, it will finally result in not only CHANGING THE WORLD, but also in SAVING THE WORLD” (The Plain Truth, January, 1969, p. 32).

Armstrong cites seven criteria by which the remnant church, from apostolic times until the present, has been identifiable: (1) observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, (2) retaining the Passover and other Jewish feasts (while renouncing Christmas, Easter, and other religious holidays of allegedly pagan origin), (3) compliance with Old Testament kosher laws, (4) rejection of the Trinity doctrine in favor of the semi-polytheistic, quasi-pantheistic, God-is-a-family concept, (5) practice of adult baptism by immersion (valid only if administered by a “true minister of the true Church”), (6) non-involvement in secular governments, and (7) use of the designation “Church of God.” Citing twelve New Testament passages in which the phrase “Church of God” appears (and noting that twelve is “God’s complete number”), an Armstrong pamphlet declares, with typically Armstrongian screaming italics and capitalizations,

These verses prove the NAME of the true Church. Denominations not bearing this could not be God’s true church. And of all the churches that do bear the name, only one could be the true Church of God—that one which OBEYS ALL the commandments of God and maintains the FAITH delivered once for all time—the one which grows in truth. All others are counterfeit, even though they may have the knowledge about the true NAME of God’s Church [A True History of the True Church, p. 28].

Herbert W. Armstrong was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1892. He describes himself at age sixteen as a precocious youth, obsessed with a desire both for wealth and prominence and for academic learning. “I began frequenting the philosophy, biography, and business administration shelves of the public library,” he says (The Plain Truth, December, 1969, p. 1). He began dating girls a year or two older than himself. But “if a girl could not discuss intelligently the philosophies of Plato, Socrates, Epictetus,” he lost interest. The dates were merely “occasional,” and he usually “spent evenings in study while other young men were seeking pleasures” (The Plain Truth, November, 1969, p. 2). Eschewing a college education in favor of his own program of self-learning, he entered the field of sales and advertising at eighteen.

It was in the fall of 1926 that Armstrong stumbled upon the first of a succession of clues that led to his “Great Enlightenment.” His wife had come under the influence of a woman (a neighbor to his parents in Salem. Oregon) who had convinced her that the God-ordained day of worship is the seventh day. Unable to talk her out of this “religious fanaticism,” Armstrong says that he was literally angered into his “first STUDY of the Bible.” He relates:

I sought, wrote for, and obtained at the public library every book or booklet possible purporting to refute seventh-day Sabbath observance. I searched every nook and cranny of the New Testament to find the sanctification … to observe Sunday. It was like hunting for the needle in the haystack—the needle that isn’t there! Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I never found it [Tomorrow’s World, June, 1971, p. 2].

On the contrary, he found abundant evidence that “the New Testament commands Sabbath observance.” Convinced of the Bible’s inspiration and authority, Armstrong made an “unconditional surrender” to God. “I told God He could have my life, and if He could make anything out of it, He could have it—I had made only a failure out of it!” To the intense young advertising executive, smarting from his third business failure, surrender meant “GIVING UP everything.” “The change came early in 1927. Almost night-and-day Bible study continued. My wife was miraculously healed.… The first conversions through my preaching came in December 1930. Never had I experienced such joy” (Tomorrow’s World, June, 1971, p. 4). Convinced of the validity of the seventh-day Sabbath, Armstrong identified with the Church of God (Stanberry, Missouri), and was ordained a minister of that body in 1931. However, when the church rejected the bizarre theory of British-Israeliam with which Armstrong had become enamored, he left this organization and began the independent ministry that has since grown into the Worldwide Church of God.

In the summer of 1933 Armstrong planned a series of lectures on the biblical formula for success and prosperity: giving instead of getting. The lectures were given in a one-room country schoolhouse eight miles west of Eugene, Oregon. Average attendance in the tiny, thirty-five-seat building was thirty-six. A larger audience was reached through the 100-watt radio station KORE in Eugene. The initial broadcast was aired during the first week of 1934, and that same month a borrowed mimeograph turned out a free publication entitled The Plain Truth for interested listeners.

Moving to Pasadena, California, Armstrong launched a third vehicle for the dissemination of his gospel in 1947. From its modest beginning (eight faculty members and four students) Ambassador College has expanded to 1,400 students on three campuses. The college at St. Albans, England, opened in 1960; the Big Sandy, Texas, campus in 1964. A current $22 million expansion program is designed to raise enrollment to 2,100 (700 at each location). A correspondence course enrolling “scores of thousands from around the world,” with “additional thousands” beginning every month; a plethora of books and pamphlets, produced at Ambassador’s modern printing plant; a second free quality magazine, Tomorrow’s World, whose October, 1971, circulation is listed as 800,000; expansion of the electronic ministry to more than 300 radio and television stations worldwide; the rise in circulation of The Plain Truth to some 1.5 million; the use of paid advertising in leading magazines; the establishment of thirteen strategically located distribution centers throughout the world; the appointment of “ministers” to cities throughout the United States and in a number of foreign countries; the establishment of churches in local communities (an estimated 200 to date); the holding of regional rallies in major cities—all these have served to transform the original local effort into a globe-encircling operation that the Armstrongs claim, with obvious exaggeration, carries the church’s message into “approximately 150 million homes” (This Is Ambassador College, 1969, p. 60; the exposure of an estimated five million people monthly to The Plain Truth would seem a reasonable index of the movement’s influence). According to figures provided by an Armstrong minister, baptized membership is approximately 70,000, of which 10,000 are overseas converts, including 4,000 in England. Armstrong’s son Garner Ted is associated with him.

What accounts for the tremendous appeal of the Armstrong movement? The dynamic broadcasts? The slick publications? The use of shock and sensationalism? Skillful use of Madison Avenue’s most ingenious devices? There are other factors.

1. In an age of religious apostasy, in which millions of Bible-believing Christians have lost confidence in their denominational leaders and institutions, Herbert W. Armstrong has declared himself and his church to be unequivocally committed to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. He has projected an image of unwavering orthodoxy by affirming the diety, virgin birth, vicarious death, glorification, and pre-millennial return of Jesus Christ.

2. In a day of moral decay and spiritual poverty, Armstrong has scathingly condemned the new morality, biblical illiteracy, the drug menace, divorce, the hippie culture, the militant protest movement, women’s lib, pollution, inflation and other aspects of society today that many feel are warning signs of the demise of civilization.

3. In a time of cynical repudiation of moral values, Armstrong has vigorously affirmed the old-fashioned Christian and American virtues of honor, reverence, patriotism, thrift, integrity, chastity, and temperance. Thus he has gained the sympathy and support of vast numbers of the so-called silent majority.

4. In a period of widespread pessimism and despair, the Armstrong gospel promises a bright, new, beautiful “World Tomorrow,” from which all the evils of contemporary society will be eradicated and in which peace, prosperity, and complete happiness will prevail. The gathering gloom of protracted war (especially the sharpening focus upon Israel as a potential arena of international conflict), intensified poverty and famine, multiplied occurrences of floods and earthquakes, increasing moral degeneration and spiritual nihilism—all these conditions bolster the role of Herbert W. Armstrong as prophet. For years he has warned that these signs would occur just before the avenging battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ to create a perfect new society under his millennial reign.

5. In an era of incessant financial appeals from scores of religious and charitable organizations, it is refreshing to find an operation that appears to be completely non-mercenary. All literature is offered free of charge. No representative will call unless invited. There is absolutely no pressure to contribute or to join. This low-key approach has done much to win public confidence in the Armstrong enterprise.

Space does not permit an extensive discussion of the deviant doctrines of Armstrongian theology. A brief list must suffice.

1. There is only one true Church—the Worldwide Church of God.

2. There is only one true interpreter of Scripture and God-enlightened prophet in these latter days—Herbert W. Armstrong.

3. There is only one acceptable day of worship—the seventh day.

4. There is only one valid means of induction into God’s Kingdom—immersion baptism administered by a minister of the Worldwide Church of God.

5. The Trinity doctrine is heretical. The Holy Spirit is a “divine force” (cf. Jehovah’s Witnesses), an “it” rather than a “he.” With the Mormons, Armstrong believes that God is a family, consisting of the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and all human beings who become also his sons (and thus equally divine) through spiritual rebirth.

6. The “new birth” has nothing to do with spiritual change in this life. It relates instead to the new life as spirit beings into which God’s children are born through resurrection.

7. The immortality of the soul is a false doctrine. Man does not have a soul—he is a soul. The soul is mortal (Ezekiel 18:4, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”). Like the Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, Armstrong and his followers believe that man ceases to exist upon death but is recreated in a future resurrection.

8. There will be three resurrections: (1) the resurrection of the faithful, who will reign with Christ in his Jerusalem-based millennial kingdom; (2) the resurrection of “the vast blinded majority, who never really had a chance to accept God’s way of life,” for a 100-year “first chance” (Armstrong denies that this is a “second chance,” since they never in fact had a fair chance during their earthly existence); and (3) the final resurrection, after this 100-year period, when the wicked will be raised, judged, and consigned to destruction in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:13–15). There is no hell. The evil will be annihilated. The only beings destined for eternal punishing (as opposed to the eternal punishment of death) are Satan and his angels.

9. Salvation is not in any sense present; it is future. It is not an act but a process. Justification (acquittal from punishment for past sins) is accomplished by faith. But salvation (ultimate forgiveness and eternal reward) is contingent upon life-long compliance with God’s ritual and moral requirements and therefore cannot be guaranteed ahead of time. The only person to date who has achieved salvation is Jesus Christ. Dubbed “the new Galatianism,” the Armstrong brand of Christianity defines the formula for salvation as faith plus works, as opposed to the Pauline doctrine of salvation through faith alone (with works seen as the inevitable effect, not a determinative cause.

10. The mainstream of conservative biblical scholarship notwithstanding, Scripture passages usually interpreted figuratively must (not should) be taken literally. Two examples:

a. “Peter said that a ‘day’ in God’s plan is as ‘a thousand years,’ and ‘a thousand years’ of human civilization is as one ‘day’ in His planned WEEK of seven 1,000-year ‘days’ (2 Pet. 3:8)” (Ambassador College Correspondence Course, Lesson I, p. 12). Accepting uncritically Ussher’s pinpointing of the Creation at 4004 B.C., Armstrong argues that the first six 1,000-year days are drawing to a close, and the seventh day of “rest” (the millennial sabbath) is about to begin.

b. Choosing to ignore Jesus’ prediction of his resurrection on “the third day” (e.g., Matt. 16:21), Armstrong insists that the “three days and three nights” prefigured by Jonah’s incarceration (Matt. 12:40) be given a literal interpretation. (This, of course, would place the resurrection on the fourth day.) Christ’s entombment was “not one and a half days as the churches today believe, but three! By this teaching of a day and a half, the devil is trying to take our very evidence of a hope for salvation away from us. Christ arose the third day! He was crucified late Wednesday afternoon and arose late Sabbath (Saturday) afternoon” (C. Paul Meredith, “If You Die … Will You Live Again?,” undated reprint, p. 5).

11. In advancing the fanciful delusions of British-Tsraelism, Armstrong assigns to absurd legendary accretions, bolstered by wildly imaginative exegesis of Scripture, the authoritative finality of the Decalogue. The “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel,” following the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C. and the collapse of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, did not lose their identity, as most historians maintain. Rather, they migrated across Europe, leaving traces of their identity along the way. The tribe of Dan, for example, left its calling card in a number of places incorporating the words Dan and Don: Danube, Dnieper, Donegal, Londonderry, Denmark (“Dan’s Mark”). The word British is derived from the Hebrew berith (covenant) and ish (man), so that British means man, or people, of the covenant. (Elimination of the e produces brith. And since the Hebrews, and later the English, drop their h’s, the result is Brit!) The word Saxon is derived from Saac’s Sons, or Isaac’s Sons (“vowels are not used in Hebrew spelling”). By a fantastic flight of fancy, Armstrong alleges that Jeremiah escorted a daughter of Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, to Ireland in 569 B.C. She had married the son of the king of Ireland, who had visited Jerusalem just prior to its fall in 585 (Armstrong’s date). Jeremiah brought with him to Ireland the stone used by Jacob as a pillow on the night of his vision of the heavenly ladder. This stone, insists Armstrong with a straight face, is the Stone of Scone which for centuries has been located in Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey!

Manasseh, destined “to become the single GREAT nation,” and Ephraim, to become a “company of nations,” are identified as the United States and Britain. “The proof that we are Manasseh is overwhelming. Manasseh was to separate from Ephraim and become the greatest, wealthiest single nation of earth’s history.… Manasseh was, in fact, a thirteenth tribe.… Could it be mere coincidence that [the U. S.] started as a nation, with thirteen colonies?” (The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong, Ambassador College, 1967, p. 126). After attaining great wealth and power, these two tribes will be defeated and destroyed by a restored Holy Roman Empire (the beast of Revelation 17), the ten horns of which will be the ten nations of which ultimately the Common Market will be composed. This united states of Europe, probably headed by Germany, will lay a “yoke of slavery-without-mercy” upon the United States and Britain.

On the surface, the Armstrong cult appears innocuous enough. In fact, most evangelicals would agree that it has much to commend it: its strong position on Scripture; its affirmation of Christ’s deity and his role as Redeemer; its hard-hitting crusade against crime, delinquency, sexual permissiveness, pornography, the drug culture, and other social and moral evils; its theological treatment of national and international affairs.

But sinister dangers lurk behind this deceptive front of solid Middle America conservatism. To adopt the Armstrong variety of Christianity is to renounce all others. To accept Armstrong’s prophetic role is to reject the wise counsel of Christianity’s greatest interpreters—among them Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. To believe the Armstrong gospel is to reject virtually all of Christianity’s classic doctrines: the Trinity, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the sinless nature and bodily resurrection of Christ, the immortality of the soul, the new birth as a conversion experience, salvation by faith alone, the existence of hell as a place of eternal punishment. To subscribe to Armstrong’s system of doctrine is to submit to a rigid straitjacket of legalism, biblical literalism, and arcane mythology—to accept a regimentation every bit as restrictive and stultifying as that of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Worldwide Church of God amply illustrates the capacity of the half-truth to seduce and ensnare. Attracted by its alluring exterior, persuaded by its smooth eloquence, disarmed by its soft-sell assurances—that the organization is “not denominational,” that its literature is “absolutely free,” that “there is nothing to join”—the unsuspecting church member is gradually brainwashed by the Armstrong propaganda until he at last succumbs. He may begin by sending money, by abandoning Sunday worship and the observance of Christmas and Easter, by seeking the services of an Armstrong minister. Then, at last, he agrees to baptism and full membership in the Worldwide Church of God and obligates himself to pay his total tithe to the organization, to cease voting and otherwise participating in “this world’s government”—in short, to buy the entire Armstrong package.

Thus he commits himself to an eclectic blend of Seventh-day Adventism, Russellism, Mormonism, and British-Israelism, for which he must be willing to forfeit those essential Christian truths and vital spiritual experiences that are the priceless heritage of all who through repentance and faith have come to know the real Jesus of the New Testament as personal Saviour and Lord. But the most disturbing aspect of the Armstrong success story is the fact that millions of professing Christians are so poorly grounded in both Scripture and doctrine that they fail to recognize the fallacies of the gospel according to Armstrong.

Ironically, for all his departures from evangelical truth, Armstrong is biblically, Christologically, and ethically much sounder than are many of the liberal theologians who shape the programs and curricula of most of the mainline denominations. Fully aware of this situation, Armstrong is exploiting the dissatisfaction of millions of disenchanted church members to the very hilt.

The Day After Christmas

The Yuletide went out

And left a beach of colored

Bows half buried—sand-sogged

Remnants of man’s gift to man …

The hint of a carol

Hung somewhere in the damp

Air of the day after—

The ghost of lusty voices

Wafted out to sea

On a strip of yellow lace—

The piece of earth

Willed good by men …

Sequins scattered,

Mingled Jingle Bells

Rung the day before …

And suddenly, what had come

Had gone like the tide,

And man’s soul

Strewn with paper magic,

Lost God’s gift to the sea

And was left on an empty shore.

BARBARA JACOBSON

Joseph Martin Hopkins is associate professor in the Department of Bible and Philosophy at Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he received the B.Mus. He also holds the B.Th. (from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary) and Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh).

On the recommendation of a friend I went to see the current film The Devils. It is about an outbreak of supposed demon possession in a convent in Loudun, France, in the seventeenth century. Before the depicted situation gets sorted out, everyone has been embroiled in political intrigue, carnal chaos, emotional havoc, inquisition, cruelty, and the most bizarre forms of voluptuous decadence imaginable.

The makers of this film chose to handle their subject matter as vividly as they could. The opening scene whisks one straight into a perfumed moral bog, with Louis XIV participating in a dionysian frolic in front of a bored and elegant Mazarin. From then until he leaves the theater, the viewer is up to his neck in blood, incense, silk, tinsel, grapes, powder, wine, and flesh.

Why speak of this to readers of a Christian journal? Isn’t this sort of thing as well ignored? Isn’t it simply more of what is to be expected from Babylon?

The answer to the latter two questions is, I should think, yes. So the first remains. The answer to that one is that the film exhibits rather vividly a matter that is worth our attention. It is a matter we encounter in one form and another again and again in our own epoch. It has to do with the zeitgeist, and with public imagination, and with the discussion and portrayal of moral issues, and, eventually, with the whole aesthetic question.

Perhaps what I am referring to ought to be cast as a question: Does there come a point at which the artistic portrayal of evil crosses a certain line and itself begins to participate in the very evil it is portraying?

All the red flags are up and aflutter as soon as anyone embarks on a line of thought like this. Censorship! Tyranny! The index! Didacticism! Inquisition! Prudery! Victoria! Mrs. Grundy! But perhaps if we back off a bit and look at what is entailed, it will not appear so outrageous.

We would have to back all the way off to the question of what art is if we were really to get the discussion on a firm footing, but what with Aristotle and the Renaissance Florentines and Elizabethans and Goethe and Shelley and a thousand others, we would never get to the matter at hand. It may be enough here to say that art, whatever else it does, represents the effort of the human imagination to get hold of its experience of life by giving some concrete shape to it all. That shape may appear in stone or syntax or oils or melody, but the whole enterprise of poetry and sculpture and drama (and hence cinema) does bespeak that effort.

Parenthetically, the question of entertainment might arise here. Isn’t all this appeal to heady aesthetic doctrine likely to dignify and elevate something that isn’t half so weighty? What about mere enjoyment? What about the books that have been written and the plays that have been produced simply to divert people for a couple of hours? Let’s not read Armageddon in every playroom scuffle, or the Beatific Vision in wallpaper.

It is not easy to find the border between “art” and “entertainment,” if indeed there is one. By its very nature, art aims at furnishing pleasure, and we are entertained by pleasure. But the word entertainment with its suggestion of diversion and lightness doesn’t serve very well when we speak of Dante or Vermeer, say, since the pleasure we get from what these artists have done seems to partake rather of sublimity than of mere diversion. Perhaps entertainment is a subdivision of pleasure—or a low rung on the ladder whose top reaches to Paradise.

It is a fact, of course, that a great deal of what we call “great art” came into being for rather utilitarian reasons—a rich man’s commission, a new cantata for next Sunday, a play for the Globe theater; and on that level it is hard to untangle the occasional from the sublime. What happens is that an occasional piece may turn out to be sublime because the man who made it is a genius. His sonnet about the Piedmont massacre or the death of the Countess, unabashedly occ̃asional, somehow participates in the sublime because he has a great and noble imagination. On the other hand, we can get planning committees together and decide to have a breathtaking spectacle and hire all the necessary professionals and work out all the logistics and blow all the trumpets—and succeed only in bringing forth appalling bathos (viz. Radio City Music Hall Christmas and Easter productions, or the cinematic biblical extravaganzas that started with The Ten Commandments).

Let us say, then, that authentic art emerges from a noble imagination whatever the occasion is that has asked for it. And, further, that if a noble imagination is at work, authentic art appears, whether the subject matter happens to be “high” or “low.” It is not very difficult, on the one hand, to see how great feats of courage, skill, or strength (as in Beowulf, Achilles, Hercules) can give rise to noble treatment. By the same token, the longings, perplexities, or doubts that beset the human mind have been fruitful sources of high utterance (for Shelley, Browning, and Wordsworth, for example). Or the soul’s experience of God often furnishes the matter for genuine poetry (Donne, Herbert, Eliot). These are easy enough to cite in connection with a theory of good art.

But what about evil—real evil—as subject matter? How do we work this in?

Dante, for instance, writes about hell, which is as low as you can get. And he writes explicitly and at great length. Here are all the damned, pictured vividly, with discussions of what it was that landed them there and of what their particular torment is. There are explicit notations of sin—lechery, gluttony, wrath, avarice, sloth, and so on.

Or take Shakespeare. What, after all, is Macbeth about? Foul murder. We watch Lady Macbeth turning herself into a monster. Or what about Chaucer? One of his most mature poems, the Troilus and Criseyda, is about illicit love. Then there is one of the most towering figures in all of English poetry—Milton’s Satan.

It will be obvious here that a distinction needs to be made between “good and evil” on the one hand, and “high and low” on the other. Clearly, great evil can furnish “high” subject matter (as in Dante and Milton). The Inferno and Satan are “low” only on some cosmic hierarchical accounting. They are “high” in the sense that they embody the biggest issues conceivable by the human imagination.

Similarly, really “low” stuff can afford the matter for genuine art. Take Fielding, with his tumble of hilarious but scurrilous situations in eighteenth-century England, or Evelyn Waugh’s brilliantly funny novels about upper-class decadence in early twentieth-century England (or, for that matter, Faulkner’s wholly serious handling of American decadence).

What seems to emerge from this line of observation is that it is entirely the treatment that decides the worth (and hence the goodness or badness) of a piece of art. There can be good art about bad things, and bad art about good things (a discussion of this last would embarrass us all, alas).

Which brings us back to the question about The Devils. It is, to use the favorite word of blurbs and critics now, “frank.” Isn’t that a point in its favor? It treats demonism (or bogus demonism—that is never really decided), and all the carnality and terror and horror that follow in its wake, colorfully and explicitly. What’s wrong with this? Can’t we be bold? Can’t we call a spade a spade? Haven’t we done well to shake off our nineteenth-century humbug and timorousness (and by this time, we all know we can be talking about only one possible topic—sex)?

No. We have not done well. In its frenetic disavowal of sexual reticence, the twentieth century has torn the veil and blundered into the Holy of Holies, as it were—and you can’t do that with impunity. It is in the nature of the case that the Ark be secluded: you can’t use it for a sawhorse. It is in the nature of the case that the shewbread be reserved—David didn’t eat it for lunch every day. And by the same token, it is in the nature of the case that human sexuality be shrouded. It is not a public matter. (Someone will bring up the Canticles here: that is a great poem of carnal love; perhaps it is not a public poem?) Not only is nothing gained by the louder, shriller, more frequent and explicit discussion and portrayal of sexuality, but there is every reason to suppose that something is being lost—something good, along with the humbug and prudery.

And this is not necessarily to take a huggermugger or sanctimonious view of sexuality. Anyone who misses the fun—even the funny—in sex is missing part of it. But, like a tiresome three-year-old’s pun, the humor cloys when it is insisted upon too loud and long.

But sex isn’t really the center of the matter. The guilt of The Devils (and of a hundred novels, plays, revues, and films one could trot out) is broader than that. It is that it fails to preserve distance. It not only points to the stew. It stirs it. It jumps in.

To isolate and articulate the difference between Dante’s handling of hell and this film’s handling of Loudun is difficult. Perhaps it has to do with a leer. If anything is leering from Dante’s pit, it is leering at the poet as well as the reader, whereas you get the uneasy feeling in The Devils that not only Louis XIV leers at you from the screen but the filmmaker as well.

We cannot say, of course, that all filmmakers (and novelists and poets) whose work fails because of this failure of distance are leering. That would be to pass a dangerous judgment on a great many people. Perhaps there is a prior fault in the era that the artists, because they live and work in the era, can escape only with difficulty. The fault would have something to do with the erosion in the modern world of such categories as absolute truth, and glory, and the holy, and thence of such responses as awe, humility, and reticence.

Finally, one has the unhappy feeling that in a great deal of contemporary art, literature, and cinema, inadequate imaginations are attempting very high summits. Script-writers, directors, producers, agents, and the rest, whose interest must be, above all, commercial, are addressing themselves quite blithely to imponderables that would give pause to the most sublime imaginations of history. The result is a proliferation of peepshows in Vanity Fair.

Thomas Howard is assistant professor of English at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts. He has the M.A. from the University of Illinois and the Ph.D. from New York University. He is author of “Christ the Tiger.”

The staff members of CHRISTIANITY TODAY join me in wishing every reader of the magazine a merry Christmas and a happy new year. We thank you one and all for the letters you have sent. Our hearts have been warmed by your encouragement and appreciation. We are also grateful for critical letters, many of which we print. They shed further light on complex questions. They let us know that we’re reaching you. They serve to remind us that we do make mistakes—and not only “typographical errors.” They help to keep us humble!

Next year promises to be most interesting. It could well be that the swelling interest in Jesus Christ may lead to a deep awakening, a desperately needed happening that none of us has seen in this generation. What has happened in Saskatoon, Canada (see page 31), may be a harbinger; we pray that it is.

It is with great regret that I report the death of our board member J. Howard Pew (see pages 22, 24, and 32). I attended his funeral service in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, on November 30, when multitudes gathered to pay their respects. Our deepest sympathies go to his two sisters, Mrs. H. A. W. Myrin and Miss Mary Ethel Pew, and to his children and grandchildren. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.

P. S. Our next issue will be dated January 7 and will appear in three weeks.

A few years ago a friend of mine who had a very beautiful little daughter was approached by an artist friend of his. The artist wanted to paint a portrait of the little girl for the cover of a national magazine. The girl had a pet kitten that she loved very much, and so it was decided to pose the little girl with the kitten in her arms. This put a look in the little girl’s eyes that the artist wanted to capture.

The painting was turned down by the magazine until the artist was able to replace the kitten with a picture of a puppy. And what was the reason? Well, the publisher wrote, “too many people don’t like cats.” For the sake of sales and the assumed wisdom of what the public “wants,” the truth and reality of the whole enterprise were twisted. I saw the picture and heard the story and I like puppies better than kittens, but the whole thing left a kind of bad taste in my mouth that I have been trying to analyze ever since. Pressure had been applied at the wrong place, and I think for the wrong reason.

Although it is hard to know what the media are doing to our tastes and to our values, anyone with any maturity, or any time to think on these things, knows in his bones that every magazine and every newspaper and every TV outlet, whether for news or for advertising, has its own “twist.” And so we are being constantly twisted.

If you have been interviewed for anything or appeared on any kind of a talk show, you know that you are being used to answer certain kinds of questions in a certain kind of way, and that even the “wrong” answer will be used to get at least some negative interest. The interviewer never really wants to plumb the subject of you; he merely wants to stay inside some accepted clichés of the day that at the moment are thought to be of great importance.

I hold that accent on youth is one of the clichés of our day. It always has to be the same kind of thing: their great intelligence, their honesty, their opinions, which always must be “listened to,” and a general outlook that brings guilt upon the parents and blasts the establishment for lack of understanding. The kitten always has to be replaced by the puppy, because otherwise the picture won’t sell.

If you are a bible-believing Christian you might want to look in the Bible for a youth program. I search in vain. John addresses himself to the young men in his first epistle, and one might draw something out of Paul in Ephesians by implication, though he is really talking about children obeying and parents not provoking and what the age of the children may be there is no way of guessing. Apart from a brief scene in the temple we know nothing about the youth of Jesus. Even at that point in the story we are told that from that period on he was “subject to” his parents, which isn’t a bad idea for youth, though I don’t hear it mentioned much in youth programs. The food, fun, and fellowship of most youth programs find no reflection in Scripture, except by the stringiest kind of implication.

Although the accent on youth is nowhere in Holy Writ, in our churches today it has become almost the essence of what we are about. If one wants to argue this point he is welcome to do so. Insofar as the programs produce and nurture Christians we can give nothing but three cheers; but what concerns me is a queasy feeling that apart from the false emotionalism so often involved, and the popularity hunger of the youth leaders, and the fact that “everybody’s doing it,” the real problem is the adults’ “copout.” They would like to throw the emphasis on the “youth” program so that they won’t feel the pressure of the “adult” program.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible is an adult book; it is aimed at adult sinners and expects them to stand and deliver, to find new birth and new life, and change society, and say their prayers, and meditate on the Bible—and take on the Christian responsibility of training their own youth in their own homes! How often you hear as a pulpit committee discusses the possible candidates: “We ought to get Joe Blow; he’ll be so good for the young people.” No man over thirty-five need apply. And so we are satisfied with the youth program and endure whatever else this young fellow has to proclaim. Besides, we can turn the edge of what the young fellow says, because after all, he is so young.

This leads to the question of how much we have to endure of amateurism. Youth speak to us on every hand. We listen to them on college boards and at civic meetings, and their pictures in these procedures make good material for the local papers. But it becomes increasingly irritating to listen to young people participate in church services, to hear them read the Scriptures badly, to hear them read a prayer that someone else has written, to hear them discuss a big question into which they have put little preparation. They are healthy and eager and attractive, and sometimes they are even cute, and so a man goes down to his house warmed—but he has neither approached nor been fed by the living Lord. One girl gave her witness at an adult meeting recently, and in the midst of tears and words like “fantastic” she shared this with us: “We stayed up all night talking about the rapture and all that stuff and how neat it is.”

Another thing that raises my suspicions: youth work is so easy. I worked for many years in private boys camps, and I have had more than my share of youth conferences. The easiest age group to handle in camp is nine to twelve. You can run them bowlegged all day, they are full of enthusiasm, and they sleep well. Note then how the age level of church and conference programs has been depressed. In the last twenty years a conference I know of has had the average age level of conferees lowered from twenty-five to seventeen, which means there are lots and lots of fifteen-year-old youngsters there. The conference is now not only a different thing—it is a different kind of thing.

Where is the accent of your church program and where is the accent of the Bible? And while you are at it you might look up “child evangelism.”

ADDISON H. LEITCH