The tongues of fire of Pentecost were a significant symbol of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. None who experienced this heaven-sent visitation were ever the same again, for God, as a Living Presence, had become a reality in their lives.

When people leave their churches next Sunday morning, how many will do so with burning hearts? How many will be filled with a joy that will compel them to tell others of the living Saviour? These are questions every minister should ask himself, for the pulpit should be a spiritual transformer through which divine power is transmitted to the pew.

Some ministers allow their enthusiasm for the social implications of the Gospel to becloud the Gospel itself; they are concerned only with the things that are seen, forgetting or never knowing the preciousness of things not seen.

It is possible for the pulpit to become so overwhelmed by the urgency of world problems that preacher and hearer alike lose their perspective and undertake to right the ills of mankind in the arm of flesh alone. How easy to forget that it is “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).

On the road to Emmaus two despondent disciples plodded along in the gloom of a lost hope and a shattered ideal. As they walked they were quietly joined by a stranger who asked them the meaning of their conversation that he had overheard. Amazed at his apparent ignorance of the events that were the “talk of the town,” they recounted the story of Jesus—his mighty works, their hope that it was he who would deliver Israel, his arrest, crucifixion, and death, and now the incredible rumor that he was alive.

The stranger was frankly critical of their ignorance and unbelief. “ ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!’ ” he admonished them. “ ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25–27).

He accepted their invitation to go with them to the evening meal, and when he blessed and broke the bread (they saw his hands) they recognized him—and he vanished out of their sight.

As they looked at each other in wonder they exclaimed, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). With the reality of the risen Lord burning in their hearts, they hurriedly went out into the night to return to Jerusalem and tell the glad news.

The burning joy of a confirmed faith has lighted the torch of evangelism in every generation. Men’s hearts long for the release that Christ came to bestow. Where the Christ of the Scriptures is exalted, his Spirit moves as a flame of fire to bring spiritual warmth and light. That any seeking heart should be forced to turn away unwarmed is a tragedy that should never happen—but does!

Some years ago a young minister told the following story, and because his own ministry had been wonderfully vitalized some of us thought he was recounting his own experience. He said that a young preacher had graduated with honors from seminary and felt fully prepared to engage the issues of the day. One Sunday he preached a fiery sermon on a burning social problem. His research was adequate, his points well taken, and at the conclusipn he felt in his heart that he had done well.

The following Sunday, he was startled to find a note placed where he had to see it: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” With considerable spirit he preached his prepared sermon on another important social problem.

For several weeks he continued his sermons on current social matters. They were well prepared, well reasoned, well expressed—a credit to his seminary training.

But one day he again found a note awaiting him at the pulpit: “Sir, we would see Jesus!” Irritated and slightly ill at ease, he delivered his sermon with even more emphasis than usual. But during the closing prayer and on his way home the request kept pushing other thoughts out of his mind: “Sir, we would see Jesus!”

When he arrived at his home he went to his room and, falling on his knees, cried out to God. He told him of his concern for the problems to be found on every hand and of his desire to see them solved. Then he remained silent before the Lord. After a while he was overwhelmed with the conviction that these unidentified parishioners were right. He had been depriving them of the spiritual food they desperately wanted. Then there came this prayer from his heart, “Oh God, help me to preach Jesus.”

The following week was one of earnest prayer and diligent searching of the Scriptures. His sermon preparation centered on the Christ he found so clearly portrayed in Scripture—truly God and truly man, crucified, dead, risen, and living in the hearts of believers.

When the next Sunday came, with humble faith and a convinced heart he preached, conscious of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, but aware of the greatness of his Subject and his own inadequacy to portray him fully.

Another week passed, and as he again took his place in the pulpit his heart sank, for he saw another note awaiting him. During the first hymn, with trembling hands he unfolded the piece of paper. On it was written, “Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.” His Vision blurred for a moment, but there was a song in his heart.

The minister who told this story is today the pastor of a large city church. Those who hear him preach go away with burning hearts, for they have heard the Scriptures explained and have come face to face with the living Saviour.

Let the preachers of America return to their primary responsibility. Let them realize that the pressing social problems of today can be solved only by men and women whose hearts burn with love for the living Christ. To do this is not easy. It demands a return to a childlike faith, a humbling of mind, a willingness to discard ideas that give primary emphasis to education and personality rather than to the Spirit of the living God.

Difficult? Perhaps. Humiliating? It just might be. But what a difference promised to those who preach and for those who hear!

In the midst of a changing and decaying world order, the Rock, the unchanging Foundation, will become a reality. His Word will become a burning fire, and the Spirit of the living God will take over and accomplish things no man can do. God’s blessing will rest on pulpit and pew.

Oh God, let the fire descend! Give us once more hearts that burn!

WRITER’S CRAMP

It is with great pleasure that I announce the inauguration of the Eutychus V religious book award program. The program is designed to upgrade the quality of contemporary religious books.

The staggering dimensions of the problem came to me on a recent visit to the offices of CHRISTIANITY TODAY when I took a look at the shelves that house book rejects.

What can I do, I asked myself, to improve the quality of religious books offered on the market? My first idea was to cut off all the fingers of the religious book writers of the world. Undoubtedly, this intrepid, hard-to-discourage lot would simply learn to operate their typewriters cum naso.

Perhaps by selective breeding, I thought, we could eliminate the “writing compulsion” gene. However, by the time we had an effective program there would be fifty thousand worthless new religious books on the market.

The possibility of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks on religious book publishing houses together with the bombing of a few strategic presses was attractive but too risky.

And then came my moment of revelation. Don’t be negative—be positive. Offer the authors an incentive for quality.

So my program of awards was born. There are three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and tripe.

The fiction category includes collected sermons, devotional books, Christian biographies, Bible commentaries, and most books by dispensationalists.

Non-fiction includes only some new translations of the Bible and Calvin’s Institutes.

Tripe includes all books that have any form of the words unique, contemporary, relevant, or exciting on the dust jacket. Also included are all books by authors citing D.D., Litt.D., and L.H.D. degrees and all books promising the rediscovery of God’s truth that has been obscured or lost until Dr. —— was given the true key to the Scriptures. (The title of this category was chosen because it’s short and easy to spell and is not to be taken pejoratively.)

Here’s the way the competition works. Each author must submit an unpublished book manuscript. In submitting he enters into a perpetual agreement that neither he nor his heirs will ever have the book published.

The manuscripts are then judged, first on the basis of which of them by not being published has saved the greatest amount of wasted time in not having to be edited, proofread, printed, distributed, read, and reviewed.

Since the first criterion naturally favors longer manuscripts, a second is: Which book by not being published has saved the greatest degree of anguish and/or disappointment on the part of potential readers? The results of the criteria will be averaged, and the winner in each category gets a cash prize.

The level of financial reward we are able to offer will depend on your generous response to this program.

PUZZLING OVER ADVENTISTS

I am puzzled why Dr. Stanley Sturges chose CHRISTIANITY TODAY as the forum for airing his views concerning what he considers to be “The Growing Quarrel Among Seventh-day Adventists” (June 18), inasmuch as he had available to him Spectrum and Perspective, the publications he himself mentioned (perhaps he knew that more Adventists read CHRISTIANITY TODAY!); and why CHRISTIANITY TODAY should see fit to publish a full-length article about what is an essentially intradenominational affair, and not yet very significant either.…

In reference to Ellen G. White, Dr. Sturges fails to distinguish between inspiration and authority. “Inspiration” has to do with origin; “authority” refers to function. Adventists do … believe that Mrs. White was inspired; and they hesitate to speak of degrees of inspiration, within or outside of the Scriptures. It does not follow, however, that “the writings of Mrs. White have the same authority as the Bible.” To make such a claim would be to make of Mrs. White’s writings a deutero-canon, and Adventists have repeatedly and emphatically declined to do so.… The classic Adventist position regarding the status of Ellen G. White’s writings … was perhaps most simply put by Carlyle B. Haynes: We test Mrs. White’s writings by the Bible, not the Bible by Mrs. White.…

As for the question of fallibility, this is a very great issue indeed. When we can all come to a definitive solution of this problem in regard to the Scriptures, then we Adventists will be able to use that solution as a paradigm for coming to terms with Mrs. White! I confess that we find the two situations quite parallel. It may even happen that our ultimate understanding of Sister White, a figure of recent history about whom we have much information, may serve us in understanding how the Holy Spirit did things through Isaiah and John!

I find it very exciting to be an Adventist these days.

Asst. Prof. of Theology

Andrews University

The Hartford Seminary Foundation

Hartford, Conn.

As a former member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church I found Stanley G. Sturges’s article most interesting.… If I could have one magazine to read it would be CHRISTIANITY TODAY, and I read it from cover to cover and then pass it on.

Los Angeles, Calif.

A VIVID CHALLENGE

The recent article “Literary Style in Religious Writing” (June 18, July 2) is vividly written.… I commend Dr. Linton for his convincing manner in “getting the point across” of the necessity of religious writing, for the purpose of “its entry into the heart”.… He left quite a challenge with me concerning “religious writing.”

San Jose, Calif.

Calvin D. Linton’s [article] is superb. How I wish I could sit in his classroom!

Auburn, Ala.

CLOUDY THEOLOGIAN

In regard to Harold B. Kuhn’s guest editorial, “The Legacy of Niebuhr” (June 18), … The whole flavor of Kuhn’s editorial is designed to place Reinhold Niebuhr in as favorable a light as possible. Granted, he was a genius, but his philosophy and ethics were totally humanistic. Most certainly his writings are neither Christian nor theological.

Neither his sinful (i.e., finite) Jesus nor his supra-historical abstraction, Christ, matches the Jesus Christ found in the New Testament. His hope is only the humanistic hope born of despair and based on what F. A. Schaeffer would call an irrational leap in the dark.

Shouldn’t an evaluation of such a man’s work contain much more criticism than the statements that evangelicals don’t agree with him and that “they regret his lack of a high view of biblical authority, and his denial of the sinlessness of our Lord”?

Although I would agree that Niebuhr’s writings contain truth and that they have been helpful to me, I would feel remiss if I didn’t take the trouble to point out that Niebuhr was guilty of pouring new wine into old bottles.

His apostasy is clear. He was an existential humanist, not a Christian theologian. Since he denied that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, he was led by the spirit of anti-christ and should come under the censure of the Word as one of those “clouds carried away by the wind without giving rain.…”

Interim President

Western Bible Institute

Denver, Colo.

ABSOLUTES AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

“Crisis in Christian Education” (May 21) is a fine contribution, and I congratulate and thank Frank E. Gaebelein for the excellence of his presentation.…

One great difficulty lies in an apparent inability on the part of those who are teaching in our Christian universities and colleges to enumerate the unchanging doctrines and spiritual values to which Dr. Gaebelein refers. It seems that academic freedom has preempted this area, so that a professor is at liberty to weave his own doctrines and to brainwash his students with his own sense of spiritual values, many of which doctrines and values are ever changing and unabiding.…

Christian educational institutions should teach within the periphery of the Christian concept that is “entirely compatible with unchanging doctrines and abiding spiritual values,” and they should also teach what is compatible with the ideals of the system whereby the contributors and potential contributors who are expected to free Christian educational institutions from full governmental dependence, will be properly inspired to fully support what is being taught.

New Orleans, La.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is doing a very fine service by means of the emphasis upon Christian education and the responsibility of the Christian public to support these schools. Every school has a tension point in reference to operating expenses and needs help badly.

I am not among those who believe that Christian colleges are going to fold up. I understand that some forty-four church-related colleges will be closing their doors this year. In many cases it will be because they have lost the excuse for existence.

Dr. Frank Gaebelein’s lead article in the May 21 issue has clearly stated that reason for existence and the integration of every discipline of learning with our Christian world and life view. Additional emphasis by Carl Henry, underscoring this viewpoint and showing the carryover of this viewpoint into every area of life, was most helpful. Thank you for your contribution to Christian education.

President

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

STRIKE AND BITE

So many of us who have been standing on the firing line of our denomination for these many years have been taking fresh heart from the work and witness of the Presbyterian Lay Committee. Their monthly magazine with clarifying articles on the many issues confronting our church have been extremely helpful.… So the attack by the stated clerk of the General Assembly (“Ecclesiastical McCarthyism” and “Presbyterians Weigh Pacts,” June 18) was really a strike at one of the few fountains of hope we have in our denomination. I cannot speak too highly of this band of stalwart, committed Presbyterians who have pledged themselves to preserve the scriptural and confessional witness of our denomination. Its tone has always been conciliatory and its veracity beyond question.

The disclosure of the grant of $10,000 to the Angela Davis Defense Fund with resulting deep division throughout our whole church makes it more imperative that the work of the Lay Committee be strongly supported. It helps us to have hope for our church, to believe that God is beginning to do a “new thing” in our midst through events like the “Celebration of Evangelism” and articles and reports from other parts of the country where so many thousands of our Presbyterian brethren and pastors have not and are not about to give up.

So thank you for your remarks; it did appear to me that there was an attempt to bite a feeding hand.

Westminster Presbyterian Church

San Jose, Calif.

HOLY TOLERANCE

My wife and I returned one month ago from a visit to the Holy Land, and wish to correct a misimpression in the editorial “The Right to Worship” (June 4).

The Ottoman empire held the Middle East for 300 years prior to World War I. After the defeat of Germany and Turkey, the Middle East was divided into Arab states roughly as they are known today. Accepting the Balfour declaration (1917), Jerusalem was to be kept open to all religious faiths, but up until the 1967 war, the members of the Jewish faith were barred from the Old City of Jerusalem.

After the Six Day War (1967), the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) was found desecrated with garbage piled against it, but still, all three faiths—Christian, Muslim, and Jew—now have access to their religious sites.

Also, because there is a Muslim shrine behind the Western Wall, the Jewish side is closed on Friday to permit the Muslims to worship uninterrupted, and Saturday, the Jewish side is closed for Jewish Sabbath observances.

When we visited Bethlehem, in the western bank, our Jewish guide turned our group over to an Arab Christian, and these two men are the best of friends. Today, there is more religious freedom and tolerance of the other man’s beliefs in the old and new city of Jerusalem than can be found anywhere else in the civilized world.

Chicago, Ill.

THE TRAGEDY OF THIS HUMOR

The June 18 “What If …” cartoon, showing a bleary-eyed, unshaven psalmist who (presumably early in the morning) exclaims: “ ‘Thou makest the outgoings of the morning to shout for joy.’ Did I really write that?” can hardly be called a contribution to good taste or to reverence for words inspired by divine majesty.…

Centuries ago, Socrates knew about a poet’s rise to heights of vatic utterance and his return, as a person, to ordinary levels of existence and communication. “Not by [their own] wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them” (Apology). If even the purely intellectual and emotional levels of “divine afflatus” in heathen poets remained unrecovered and unattainable in subsequent states of calm and tranquility, why be surprised at greatness of utterance granted by so unique a force as divine inspiration? Even a child can point out the fatal flaw in the “humor” of the June 18 cartoon.

Milwaukee, Wis.

THE COMPETITION SAID IT ALL

May I express my admiration and gratitude for Carl F. H. Henry’s courageous article “Introduction to Theology” (“Footnotes,” June 4).

It is indeed extremely sad that theology, after an 1,800-year intellectual pursuit, finally has nothing more to say than has already been said by the competition outside the Church for ages.

Right now the ecclesiastical business seems to concentrate on a never-ending sequence of self-perpetuating and totally useless meetings to provide the majority of the establishment with a convenient excuse for not having time to tackle the real issues and actually backing up their frustrated laity.

Fortunately Christ and the saints have demonstrated to the Church that serving God does not have to be synonymous with monumental inertia, mental retardation, and/or doctrinal petrification. “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe!—plans to give you a future full of hope” (Jer. 29:11).

Chairman, Technology Division

Durham College

Oshawa, Ont.

EDITORIALS

Evidence at hand indicates that the great revival discussed by Robert E. Coleman (see page 10) may already be upon us. Revival is a period of renewed spiritual interest often characterized by emotionally charged evangelistic outreach. That we are in such a period is indisputable.

Consider: The Church in Africa has been growing at such a rapid rate that the continent may be predominantly Christian in just three decades. Christianity is also booming in South America; in some areas the evangelical community is growing up to fifteen times faster than the soaring birth rate. A similar spiritual groundswell is said to be building up in Eastern bloc nations, including the Soviet Union. Indonesia continues to experience the effects of revival. Multitudes of Koreans are coming alive to God. There are faint stirrings in Western Europe and India. And what is popularly known today as “the Jesus movement” has arrived in North America.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY reported the movement’s beginnings as far back as 1967 and 1968, before it had a name. (“The Jesus movement” is simply a youth-coined synonym for revival or—as it is called in Roman Catholic revival circles [see page 31]—renewal.) And we have been keeping abreast of developments since then in our news columns, though so much has been happening of late that it is hard to inscribe bench marks on every new outcropping of the Spirit. As a result of much attention from news media and because of the scope of the movement, especially among the young, we find that many church members—clergy included—are wondering whether it is all just a fad.

With so many thousands of young people involved, and given the reality of group-identity pressures, it can reasonably be assumed that cases of band-wagon Christianity do exist. Faddism is furthered by commercial exploitation—for example, a “Jesus People’s wrist-watch” marketed by a church for $14.95. But it can also be the product of church neglect or inability to follow through with new converts.

On a wide front, however, the movement defies description as a fad. As Time wisely noted, the “off-beat” element with the faddish characteristics accounts for only a fraction of those involved in what the weekly newsmagazine called “the Jesus revolution.” Moreover, many of the counter-culture converts—the “street Christians”—of the years 1967–70 are still hanging in there, spiritually stronger than ever. Countless students netted in campus revivals during those years carry on effective ministries today. Youth groups in some churches have continued to grow in numbers and spiritual maturity since sparks were ignited a few years ago. Home Bible-study groups among adults are multiplying. The charismatic phenomenon continues to spread in mainstream institutional churches, most noticeably among Roman Catholics.

Personal Bible study is a hallmark of the movement. Prayer for many is as natural as breathing. Testimonies are Christ-centered. Outreach occurs daily. Dynamic give-and-take fellowship exists. To some extent, there is genuine concern for the needs of others. A high code of morality prevails. Love, joy, and peace abound. These are descriptions not by leaders of the movement but by hard-bitten secular journalists who have covered the scene and come away deeply impressed.

Faddism is not the only criticism. Critics also fault the movement for anti-institutional sentiments about the Church, over-zealousness, social neglect, excessive emotionalism, experience-centeredness, little sense of repentance, informality in worship, non-conformist practices and appearances, too much emphasis on speaking in tongues, a super-subjective trust that avoids head-on confrontation of real-life issues.

There are excesses, defections, and dangers in the movement. Theologically defective cults such as The Way and the hate-tripping Children of God are making inroads. Some neo-Pentecostalists believe that unless one speaks in tongues he does not possess a full measure of the Spirit, and they judge accordingly. And a few of the new-type Christians have written off the institutional church as hopelessly inert.

Our most serious anxiety comes at the theological level. A much more substantial apologetic is needed at the root of the Jesus movement. Every movement is time-structured and ephemeral, and this one could be particularly short-lived if the converts are not instructed in depth in the basics of the faith. Christianity is ultimately founded on cognitive knowledge, historically anchored in the work of the cross and the Resurrection as recorded, not in myth or tradition or subjective experience, but in the propositional statements of Holy Scripture. Let there be no compromise at this point. And the Great Commission includes the admonition to teach, which is where the Church comes in. Nurture of the converts—not in a condescending way—is a duty of the older generation.

In some cases, however, the aberrations are overreactions against equally wrong conditions in churches: lifelessness, coldness in worship, lack of genuine fellowship and fervor, lack of soul-winning zeal, and the like. God may well be using certain sectors of the movement—communal street Christians, for instance—to teach us the importance of Christian community, of life together in the body of Christ. It is significant that revived Catholics sing “Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us” (rather than “me”).

Institutional misgivings (denied by many Jesus-movement people, confirmed by others) may have enabled some to recapture the vitality and personal warmth of koinonia that the Church once had. They are a muted call for the churches to scrutinize the effectiveness of their structures, to realign priorities with scriptural mandates. This movement comes, after all, as water on the long-parched ground around many churches where the faith has either been abortively demythologized or lifelessly dogmatized. And to the extent that the new believers are out to integrate belief and experience in a biblical dimension, they have our unwavering support. We sense that this may be the Holy Spirit’s way of bringing revival to our society. If the Church turns its back, it does so to its own detriment.

The real challenge of the movement is twofold: whether the organized church can welcome these new Christians with love and patience, and whether the new Christians can reciprocate. We might well ask whether the times call not for evaluation of one another so much as for participation in the growing body of Christ.

Meanwhile the water of life Jesus promised is flooding through society today, and multitudes of spiritually thirsty people are drinking. So many are being influenced that it would not be surprising if Time selected Jesus Christ as its Man of the Year.

United Presbyterians And Angela Davis

The decision of the United Presbyterian Standing Committee on Church and Race to contribute $10,000 to the defense of Angela Davis has done more to alert United Presbyterians to the leftward turn of their leadership than any other action in recent years. The decision was made by people who, neither ignorant nor stupid, may favor changing the political structures of the United States. Yet it may turn out that the structures they have most undermined through this decision are those of the liberal establishment in their own church. And this may be all to the good.

In the Presbyterian context, the point in the Angela Davis controversy is not that she is black, nor does it have anything to do with her constitutional right to a fair trial. The question is why the United Presbyterian Church should contribute to the defense of a Communist. Two things should be said. First, no Communist on trial has ever lacked for funds or for attorneys before the courts of Justice in the United States. Angela Davis has no need of Christian money to ensure an adequate defense. Secondly, as a Communist, Miss Davis must be a dialectical materialist and a proponent of atheism. All Communists want to undermine and oppress the Church. Why should the United Presbyterian Church give money to one who, should she succeed in her ultimate objectives, would oppress the very church that aided her?

Plea For A Sympathizing Tear

Will the Presbyterian Church U. S. split?

“I hope not; I pray not,” declared its new moderator at the 111th General Assembly of the Southern denomination last month (see News, July 2 issue, page 31).

The vast majority of the 958,000 member church’s laymen and clergy “are loyal,” continued Dr. Ben Lacy Rose, an agreeable man of rather orthodox theology and liberal views about church polity and social action. He was referring to the razor-thin margin by which the restructure provision for the denomination’s synods passed and the avowed intent of a moderate-conservative faction within the church to pull out. Debate centered on whether restructure will make union with the more liberal United Presbyterian Church U. S. A. a foregone conclusion.

While admitting that the closeness of the vote (217 to 210) “worries me,” Rose told newsmen restructure will “not in any way make union any easier; in fact, it may make it harder.”

Others sharply disagreed. Andrew Jumper, pastor of St. Louis’ Central Presbyterian Church and a spokesman for the moderate-conservative coalition, predicted certain secession, beginning this year. “The handwriting is now on the wall very clearly,” said another longtime observer, noting that liberals appeared to be intransigent in their stance toward conservatives. (For example, a conservative-backed candidate for the church’s General Council—he would have been its first openly conservative member in recent denominational history—was defeated rather decisively by a liberal candidate.)

A split in the Presbyterian Church U. S. is all but inevitable. We view this prospect with sorrow. Historically, splinter groups have a rather poor record of success. The strength of this church lies in “the great middle,” and the restructure issue leaves the moderates in an intolerable position and seems certain to erode the conservative-moderate power-base. Conservatives will leave; how many is yet unclear. “If they leave,” said Dr. Rose, “it’s with our tears and with the breaking of our hearts.” The tearing asunder of a church should cause tears—by those on both sides.

If splitting is preferable to compromising essentials of biblical faith—and we think it is—then let each side stand where it must. But let there be Christian charity, and an amicable parting of the ways. Only thus will the body of Christ be spared further injury.

Why Smile?

Two dots and a half moon make a happy-face pin, a visual plea for smiles from the love generation. And for the older, not-so-now generation, “have a nice day” bumper stickers do the same thing. Happiness hucksters spread their simple message with zeal, challenging gloom, assaulting the blahs, drumming up optimism.

And meanwhile the war drags on, the goal of justice for all continues to elude us, drug addiction and alcoholism keep rising, unemployment and inflation hold us in a vise, dark rumors of environmental catastrophe terrify us.

Perhaps smile pins and nice-day stickers are a calculated attempt to put on a brave, happy face while the world falls apart. But the Christian can pack them full of meaning. He can give a resounding reason for the hope within him, for a nice day, for a happy face.

Space Martyrs

We join with men of good will everywhere in mourning the deaths of the Soyuz 11 crewmen. We extend deep condolences to their families and colleagues and to all those in the Soviet Union whose national pride has helped make possible that nation’s remarkable achievements in space.

In a sense, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev lost their lives while in the service of humanity. Their daring and dedication will continue to inspire men and women to explore the previously uncharted recesses of the universe. They died having set a new space-flight endurance record of twenty-four days and twenty-two hours.

The death of the cosmonauts serves us also with the reminder that science offers no ultimate guarantees. May it prod God-fearing people not to forgo intercession for those who will be taking the next risks. Our prayers for the Apollo 15 crew scheduled to lift off this month should be not only in the interests of their immediate safety but also for the overall good of space exploration, that it may promote authentic human progress.

The Right To Know

Delicate questions were raised by the unauthorized divulgence of the Pentagon papers on Indo-China.

Significantly, the New York Times and other news media privy to secret data in which the government was critical of its own conduct of the Viet Nam war did not claim a right to publish any and all classified material. They merely argued that the material in hand did not in fact injure national security. In essence, they were not debating the freedom of the press in a broad sense, but were contending that in this particular case the government erred in keeping the material classified. Dr. Daniel Ellsberg argues that he was doing his country a favor by making public non-sensitive aspects of the study.

Barry Goldwater contends that “if this country or any other nation allows each and every publisher to make his own decision on matters of national security—whether it be in the name of freedom of the press or on some other pretext—then the word ‘security’ has no further meaning for us as a nation. We might just as well invite the Soviets and the military overlords of Communist China to sit in with the President and members of the National Security Council when strategic questions are debated and decided.” He might have added that publishers will obviously differ on what endangers national security.

But what do we do with politicians who are overprotective of sensitive information? Understandably, they find it hard to separate political considerations from matters of national security. Further complexities arise through government officials’ custom of giving special briefings to newsmen. Every Washington newsman knows there are perpetual leaks of classified information—often on purpose.

In a free society, responsibility is not an option. It must be exercised by both newsmen and government officials. In the case of the Pentagon papers, we wonder why the Times did not avail itself of its rights under Section 552 of Title 5, United States Code. This section provides that “on complaint, the district court of the United States in the district in which the complainant resides, or has his principal place of business, or in which the agency records are situated, has jurisdiction to enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency record improperly withheld from the complainant.” Should not the newspaper have filed such a complaint and demanded an official release of at least a portion of the papers rather than break the law by publishing secret information? They chose rather to risk conviction for endangering national security. Conceivably, they may yet face such charges. The Supreme Court merely struck down the government’s attempt to exercise “prior restraint” against publication.

The adversary relationship between newsmen and government officials is healthful in a free society. It is one of the things that distinguishes democracies from dictatorships. The risks entailed are far preferable to totalitarianism. Thus far, generally speaking, the news media have exercised commendable restraint, and we can only hope this will not deteriorate. The government can and should tighten up security to protect genuinely crucial information, on the one hand, and on the other hand be more candid about other data—even if that proves embarrassing. Leaks are inevitable, however, and the news media for their part must not begin to minimize the responsibility they share with government in this area. Indeed, the news media need to keep in mind that they have a direct stake in national security, for part of what that security is protecting is the right to know.

An existential ethic might well leave the whole problem to “fate” by letting individual norms prevail. But a truly Christian approach demands pursuit of a relevant revelational ethic. To assume this task is the responsibility of thinking Christians.

Plight Of Parochaid

The restrictions on parochaid handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court (see page 34) will work to Christian advantage over the long run. A previous decision properly noted that “it is not only the nonbeliever who fears the injection of sectarian doctrines and controversies into the civil polity, but in as high degree it is the devout believer who fears the secularization of a creed which becomes too deeply involved with and dependent upon the government.”

In his parochaid opinion, Justice William Brennan, a Roman Catholic, rightly argued that the very policing of religious educational facilities necessitated by parochaid would prove harmful to churches: “The picture of state inspectors prowling the halls of parochial schools and auditing classroom instruction surely raises more than an imagined specter of governmental ‘secularization of a creed.’ ”

Federal subsidies entail similar dangers. Brennan noted that “the Federal Government exacts a promise that no ‘sectarian instruction’ or ‘religious worship’ will take place in a subsidized building. The Office of Education polices the promise.” In one case, he said, federal officials demanded that a college cease teaching a course on the history of Methodism in a federally assisted building, even though the Supreme Court has declared that the Establishment Clause “plainly does not foreclose teaching about the Holy Scriptures or about the differences between religious sects in classes in literature or history.”

Brennan also pointed out that when a sectarian institution accepts state financial aid it becomes obligated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment not to be selective in admissions policies and faculty hiring. The District Court in the Rhode Island case declared that with state subsidies parochial schools might lose control over not only which students should be enrolled but which teachers should be employed! “At some point,” the District Court said, “the school becomes ‘public’ for more purposes than the Church would wish. At that point, the Church may justifiably feel that its victory on the Establishment Clause has meant abandonment of the Free Exercise Clause.”

What the Supreme Court has not yet faced up to is how subtle sectarianism can be kept out of public schools. Indeed, this is why Roman Catholics and an increasing number of Protestants insist on training their own children in a Christian context. Public schools invariably impart “religion,” not in the sense of rites or doctrines, but on the equally if not more important level of value systems—a growing number of which are at odds with what is taught at home and in church. The problem might well bring on the next big controversy between church and state in America.

The Wrath Of God

Zedekiah, the last king of Judah (597–586 B.C.), was a proud man who did “evil in the sight of the Lord his God.” He was not alone in his wickedness, for Scripture tells us that “all the leading priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations” (2 Chron. 36:14). Here were an apostate king, an apostate clergy, and an apostate people. Would God, could God let their wickedness go unjudged?

Scripture repeatedly asserts that God is longsuffering. His judgment on apostasy does not fall upon men or nations until he has given them plenty of opportunity to repent and thus avert judgment. But his patience does not extend indefinitely. Therefore Scripture urges that today we should repent, for tomorrow may be too late. As for Zedekiah and Judah, “the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers” (2 Chron. 36:15), because “he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place.” Here is the blazing love of God, the persistent entreaty that his people mend their ways, the extended arm of mercy to sinful men.

But the response to the divine initiative was negative. “They kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his word and scoffing at his prophets.” When they reached the point of no return, the wrath of God was kindled. The Scripture says, “There was no remedy.” The disease was deadly. The patient was moribund. In holy anger God brought an end to the kingdom, captivity to the people, the desolation of the sanctuary, and the sacking of the city of Jerusalem.

The so-called Christian nations of today, as well as churches, clergy, and people who despise God’s words and scoff at his prophets, may shortly face his wrath. He who is a God of wrath is first a God of love, however. Judgment need not come—if his people, those who are called by his name, will humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways.

Significant Textual Mines

The Gospel of John: A Commentary, by Rudolf Bultmann (Westminster, 1971, 744 pp., $15), and The Gospel According to John (xii–xxi), by Raymond E. Brown (Doubleday, 1970, 670 pp., $8), are reviewed by James M. Boice, pastor, Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

What is longer than the German edition of Rudolf Bultmann’s monumental commentary on John (Das Evangelium des Johannes, 563 pages)? Answer: the English edition! Well, that’s one answer anyway. Another answer is: the second volume of Raymond E. Brown’s painstaking commentary on John for the Anchor Bible series (670 pages, total 1,208) which now completes that commentary. (A third volume, on the Epistles of John, is still expected from his pen.)

Other writers might fill commentaries of this length with a lot of verbiage, but this is not true of Brown and Bultmann. These texts are a mine of information. Between them they offer the English reader what is probably the most comprehensive survey of scholarly insight into the text and content of the Fourth Gospel ever available, plus consistently original contributions toward understanding that book.

Bultmann’s work is the more original, though it contains all the weaknesses (as well as the strengths) of the Bultmannian approach to New Testament criticism. Bultmann’s strengths are well known. Few will be unimpressed by his thoroughness in this volume (seventy-one pages on the prologue alone) and his mastery of exegetical and philological detail. The careful student will appreciate his attempts to explain why the word logos is dropped after the prologue, the difference between “panta” and “pas” in the opening verses, and so on.

However, the same student might also be distressed by Bultmann’s general disregard for the actual history of Jesus as it is given to us in the Gospel. It is not just that he is highly skeptical about the possibility of establishing any valid historical data; he really does not consider the history important. It is “the Christ of faith,” not “the Jesus of history,” who interests Bultmann. What is more, to his mind this is also all that interested the biblical writers. The bias away from history is most clearly seen in his handling of the resurrection narratives, for these are treated in a very summary manner (only nineteen pages for the entire twentieth chapter) and for the most part as allegory.

Where do the distinctive terms and categories of the Gospel come from, according to Bultmann? The answer is: mostly from Gnosticism, particularly from “early oriental” or from Mandaean Gnosticism. Today most scholars would agree that far closer parallels are to be found in the particular thought patterns and vocabulary of the Qumran Community now known to us through the discovery in 1948 of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bultmann’s commentary first appeared in 1941.

It should be noted also that the very brilliance of Bultmann sometimes leads him to conclusions that all but the most loyal of his disciples would call bizarre. To give one example: he thinks the poetic sections of the prologue were originally a hymn composed in honor of John the Baptist. To defend this ingenious suggestion, however, one must assume: (1) that substantial communities organized themselves around the memory of John the Baptist, an assumption by no means proved despite the mention of John in Acts 18:25 and 19:3; (2) that an earlier form of the hymn was composed in these communities and used there, again without evidence; (3) that the writer of the Gospel knew of this hymn; (4) that he borrowed the hymn and applied it to Jesus, after first, of course, removing whatever references there may have been to the Baptist; and (5) that he then reintroduced contrasting references to John the Baptist into it; these appear as verses 6–8 and 15 of the present text. Certainly it is far less confusing to regard the prologue either as an early Christian hymn used by John or as an independent composition of the evangelist.

The commentary now completed by Father Brown is much more concerned with history. Thus the reader finds him devoting considerable space to the question whether the Last Supper was observed on the fourteenth or fifteenth of Nisan. Bultmann relegates his discussion of the same matter to a footnote and concludes that “the historical question” is of no “importance for the interpretation of John.” Brown also deals at length with the historicity of the appearances of Jesus to Mary, Peter, and the Beloved Disciple on Easter morning. At one point he rejects Renan’s well-known explanation of the resurrection as a belief that originated from the passion of an hallucinated woman (Mary), concluding, “Truly an explanation worthy of nineteenth-century French romanticism.”

One must not construe Brown’s arguments as an adequate defense of the Gospels as history, however. His approach is still highly critical. Thus in reconstructing the events of Easter morning he allows that two disciples, one of them Peter, probably did come to the tomb to find it emptied. But he goes on to say that the moment of belief cited on the part of the Beloved Disciple—“he saw and believed”—was added for theological purposes.

Yet though Brown’s critical postures lessen the value of his volume, they do not destroy it. Indeed, they could hardly destroy a work of such magnitude prepared with such attention to detail. The dust jacket says, “What is attempted here is a synthesis of the major scholarly insights that bear on the Fourth Gospel,” and this is no promotional exaggeration, as those who have read the first volume know. The discussion is careful, fair, and painstaking, never more so than when the author is dealing with positions with which he disagrees. The bibliography is impressive. The format contains a translation of the Greek text, notes on the text and translation, general comments, and detailed comments for each section. Thus one can use the volume on however deep a level he desires. A number of appendices, as in the first volume, plus a twenty-eight-page index conclude the commentary.

In opening acknowledgments Brown notes that the magnificent bibliography on John by E. Malatesta and Bruce Metzger’s Index to Periodical Literature on Christ and the Gospels give the scholar coverage of virtually all that has been written on John’s Gospel to date. For all but the scholar’s scholar, Brown’s work comes close to providing a synthesis of the same information. Read it for information. Read Bultmann for insight and provocation.

Helping America Understand Barth

The Theology of Karl Barth, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 323 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Donald W. Dayton, assistant professor of bibliography and research and acquisitions librarian. Asbury Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Finally, after twenty years, we have an English translation of this now classic work in which von Balthasar (1) broke through the reigning Catholic (and Protestant!) stereotype of Barth as a disciple of Kierkegaard, (2) laid the foundation for much of the Catholic-Protestant dialogue that has since taken place on the continent, and (3) achieved an understanding of Barth’s basic intention, particularly his “Christocentrism,” that Barth himself found “incomparably more powerful than that of most of the books which have clustered around me.”

In Barth, claims von Balthasar, “Protestantism has found its full-blown image for the first time,” but Barth’s commitment to the whole theological history of the Church yields a “theology that is co-extensive with ours in history and subject matter.” Von Balthasar chooses to hold a dialogue on the themes of creation, incarnation, and redemption, where he finds Barth more creative and also closer to Catholicism. The latter is no small claim in view of Barth’s comment, “I regard the analogia entis as the invention of Antichrist and think that because of it one cannot become Catholic.” Barth’s contempt for Catholicism was second only to his contempt for liberal “neo-Protestantism.”

Von Balthasar tackles this barrier by first arguing that one must interpret Barth’s earlier works (especially Der Römerbrief) in terms of the Church Dogmatics rather than vice versa, as has been done by Jerome Hamer (Karl Barth. 1949) among Catholics and Cornelius Van Til (The New Modernism, 1946) among Protestants. It is claimed not that Barth’s basic concern changed but that he successively tried and discarded various forms of expression (existential individualism and theological actualism) before settling finally on the definitive Christological foundation of the Church Dogmatics. In this last stage Barth turned the analogia entis on its head by proposing instead the analogia fidei in which, von Balthasar explains, “creation’s likeness to God is a one-way street. It is fashioned, from above by the Word, which lays hold of creation. It is the action of God upon creation.”

The central part of von Balthasar’s book (then expounds Barth’s major themes as they shed light on the concept of analogy. Von Balthasar argues that Barth did find a place within the analogia fidei for philosophy, a form of natural theology, the freedom of man, and the distinctness of creation. He appears to grant Barth’s basic premises, demurring only where he finds that Barth is too extreme and too constrictive in his statements.

The final section of the book offers an impressive interpretation of Catholic thought about nature that rejects any concept of natura pura understandable apart from grace. Von Balthasar points to a number of other Catholic thinkers who also ground creation in Christology. By this he hopes “to show that the viewpoints which Barth regarded as the pillars of his dogmatics are not exclusively Protestant or Calvinist, that they are in fact supported and maintained by prominent Catholic Scholars,” so that the remaining “differences are certainly no greater than those between Barth and other Protestant theologians (e.g. Brunner) or those between Catholic theologians on many issues.” The conclusion is obviously that such small differences cannot justify a split in the Church.

What is the value of this book for the American theological scene? Unfortunately, it is already twenty years out of date. The seven volumes of the Church Dogmatics have grown to thirteen and now include in particular Barth’s Christology in several volumes. Hans Küng has continued the Catholic-Protestant dialogue over Barth in Justification (1957, translated 1964), based to a great extent on this new material. Yet von Balthasar’s grasp of Barth is such that the work can still serve as a powerful introduction to the thought of one who surely ranks with the greatest theologians of the Church. As von Balthasar puts it, “rarely in Christian circles has love for God echoed so forcefully through a man’s lifetime work.”

America has rather consistently misunderstood Barth. There are, however, some signs of change. A number of works since the mid-sixties suggest that Barth is being taken seriously and he is finally being understood. James D. Smart (The Divided Mind of Modern Theology, 1967) sees remarkable parallels between the European mood of the twenties and the American mood of the late sixties. He suggests that America is finally prepared, both psychologically and theologically, to understand and experience the theological revolution that shook Europe in the 1920s. In the words of William Hordern, “future history may conclude that on this continent, at least, theology in the sixties was still pre-Barthian” (revised edition of A Layman’s Guide to Protestant Theology, p. 149). Evangelicals should hope that this is true. Unfortunately, however, the signs still seem to point to the dominance of Bultmann and the rise of a “neo-liberalism.”

If Barth should return to the center of the theological stage, then von Balthasar’s book will be of value in (1) providing a powerful introduction to critical Barthian themes, (2) helping to correct current misunderstandings of Barth (in particular with his Part Two: The Development of Barth’s Theology), and (3) illustrating the high level of dialogue that must yet take place if

American theologies of all convictions are to be faithful to their calling.

Perhaps a few, final technical comments should be made. The English version is an abridgment of the German. About 40 per cent of the original seems to have been cut. Some questionable steps have been taken in translation, and a number of typographical errors remain. But it is the bibliography that particularly offends my sensibilities: it is incomplete, inconsistent, and occasionally inaccurate in dates, titles, and imprints.

A Commendable High-School Text

Religious Literature of the West, by John R. Whitney and Susan W. Howe (Augsburg, 1971, 315 pp., $5.60), is reviewed by Donald Tinder, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

When the Supreme Court in 1963 rightly declared illegal state-sponsored prayers and Bible readings in the public schools, it simultaneously affirmed that “one’s education is not complete without a study of … the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization” and that “the objective study of religion, as an integral part of the regular public school curriculum, is consistent with the … Constitution.” In the hullabaloo of opposition to the court’s decision, this call to the study of religion was widely overlooked, but not in Pennsylvania. There legislation was soon enacted calling for the preparation of elective courses. After years of experience, including much criticism, Religious Literature of the West has been published as a text for the course.

The title is somewhat misleading, for the literary selections are confined to sacred scriptures—the Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an—plus some ancient rabbinic literature. The writings of theologians, preachers, missionaries, liturgists, and hymnists, as well as the authoritative writings of religious leaders and prophets, are all an essential part of “religious literature.”

The authors wisely sidestepped the issue of which translation of the Bible to use, and also saved space, by simply referring the students to the biblical passage under discussion. (The non-biblical writings are given in full.) The selections are good, and the commentaries are more fair than one is accustomed to encountering in such supposedly objective books. For example, certain views commonly held among evangelicals—that Moses was essentially the author of the Pentateuch, that Isaiah was the work of one man, that Daniel was written in the sixth century—are recorded with respect. Alternative views that prevail among non-evangelical scholars are presented also, but as theories rather than assured findings.

All too often summaries of the New Testament are confined to ethical teachings, parables, and adventures. Religious Literature of the West is to be highly commended for putting the stress where it belongs, on the Gospel. The first selection is First Corinthians 15; the whole Gospel of Mark is to be read; and not only are chapters three through six of Romans assigned, but the commentary highlights the difference between the Christian and Jewish understandings of how man is made right with God.

Christians who firmly believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to use the study of the Scriptures to bring men to faith in Christ, even without—or in spite of—the aid of human teachers, can only rejoice that many high-school students will be confronted with the Gospel in courses using this text. Even if the course itself does not provoke faith, the knowledge of Scripture gained from it will help students make sense out of the preaching of evangelists and the witnessing of Christian peers.

One lamentable error in Religious Literature of the West is the assertion that verbal inspiration means dictation. The authors simply cannot present evidence that those who affirm verbal inspiration, as evangelicals generally do, mean that the biblical writers were only secretaries. It is probable that every writer advocating verbal inspiration over the past two generations has explicitly asserted that dictation is not what is meant. This error should be called to the attention of teachers using this text and should be corrected in subsequent editions.

Inevitably, a text such as Religious Literature of the West will not please everyone in all that it says. However, until something better is offered, there is no compelling reason to oppose the adoption of this text for high-school courses that strive to study religion objectively and hence serve also to acquaint young people with the revelation of God.

Between Rocks And Whirlpool

Esther, by Carey A. Moore (Doubleday, 1971, 195 pp., $6), is reviewed by Homer Heater, professor of Old Testament, Capital Bible Seminary, Washington, D. C.

This is volume 7B in the Anchor Bible series of commentaries. Its author is professor of religion at Gettysburg College. He spends about fifty pages on the translation and text. Pictures are included for the first time in this series; most of them could be found in an up-to-date handbook on archaeology or a Bible dictionary.

One of the first things that strikes the reader is that a volume designed for “the general reader with no special formal training in biblical studies” is filled with technical material; the author presumes more background than the “general reader” could ever hope to have. This criticism has been made about other Anchor volumes also.

The discussion on canonicity is helpful, but I am a little disturbed by Moore’s categorical statement, “Evidently Esther was not regarded as canonical by the Essene Community at Qumran.…” Fragments from the book may yet turn up there.

The basic weakness in the commentary is Moore’s rejection of the historicity of Esther. This of course colors his entire treatment of the book. Rather than grapple with historical problems, he tosses them out as part of the author’s literary approach. For a helpful article see J. Stafford Wright’s “The Historicity of the Book of Esther” in J. Barton Payne, editor, New Perspectives on the Old Testament (Word, 1970).

The problem of the absence of any mention of God in Esther is dealt with better in the text section than in the introduction. Moore finds “fasting,” “help from another place,” and “raised up for this time” veiled references to God.

Moore discusses the Septuagint and the AT (presumed Lucianic recension which he believes is a different translation) without making a statement on the relative values of the versions and the MT. The two-page listing of various spellings of the personal names in the versions provides little help to the “general reader.”

The translation is very lucid and enjoyable. Moore states his desire to steer a course between the “rocks of literalism and the whirlpool of paraphrase.” On the whole, he was successful, but there are many exceptions. For example, when the king says to Haman, “The money is given to you” (3:11), Moore paraphrases, “Well, it’s your money.” When there is a problem of interpretation in the phrasing of the text, as here, I do not believe the translator should pre-empt the reader’s right to work it out to his own satisfaction. Another example is the way he conveys repetition in answering someone; his paraphrase “All right” (5:7; 6:7) misses the Eastern flavor. He usually picks up the Hebrew idiom quite nicely.

With all the new translations flooding the market, the value of a new one in Esther might be questioned. Still, Moore’s is well worth reading. The notes and introduction will be of interest and some help to those who have the background to use them. The comments I find to be of little value to anyone.

Now Delight, Now Despair

Ezekiel: A Commentary, by Walther Eichrodt (Westminster, 1970, 594 pp., $12.50), is reviewed by Ronald Youngblood, professor of Old Testament interpretation, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Walther Eichrodt has already made his mark as one of the Continent’s most creative Old Testament scholars through the publication of his two-volume Theology of the Old Testament (see, for example, Lester J. Kuyper’s review of Robert B. Laurin, ed., Contemporary Old Testament Theologians, in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 7, 1971). Now he has added considerably to his reputation by producing his commentary on Ezekiel. Cosslett Quin’s rather free English translation leaves something to be desired; its frequent sentence fragments and infelicities of expression are not found in Eichrodt’s masterful German original. Nonetheless, Westminster Press is to be commended for its prompt and generally competent edition.

The late H. H. Rowley concluded that the prophecy of Ezekiel is basically a literary unity and that the ministry of the prophet took place “wholly in Babylonia in the period immediately before and after the fall of Jerusalem.” Eichrodt accepts this more or less traditional interpretation, though like Rowley he admits to substantial “remodelling, elaborating, and supplementing” by later hands (Ezekiel’s disciples, for the most part). The shorter Septuagint text of Ezekiel he believes to be more reliable than the Massoretic text, and he frequently emends the Hebrew text in deference to the LXX as well as on the basis of other presuppositions (to which, however, he is not always consistently faithful). Many of the caveats of the cautiously appreciative review of Volume II of his Theology by R. Laird Harris in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (November 10, 1967) apply equally to the commentary.

But for all that, the values of Eichrodt’s Ezekiel are numerous. The experience and ministry of an ancient priest and prophet come alive in his talented hands. His exegesis of individual passages is usually suggestive and always penetrating. Thoroughly abreast of modern biblical scholarship, Eichrodt applies his immense literary and interpretive skills to a frequently neglected and maddeningly difficult section of Holy Scripture. The results are often surprising, bringing the reader now delight, now despair. And his constant insights into Ezekiel’s transfer value for Christian life and witness, whether explicit or implicit, made the reading of his commentary a sometime act of devotion for this reviewer.

Newly Published

The Unheard Billy Graham, by David Lockard (Word, 166 pp., $4.95). After summarizing Graham’s life and evangelistic message, the author gives a systematic presentation of his ethical teaching.

Religion and Literature, by Helen Gardner (Oxford, 194 pp., $6). The author, Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, first gave these essays as lectures—“Religion and Tragedy,” the 1968 T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, and “Religious Poetry,” the 1966 Ewing Lectures. She surveys religious feeling in tragedy from the Greeks to the present and discusses various religious poets, concluding with, naturally, poets of the seventeenth century. She also proposes reasons why the twentieth century has produced no religious tragedy (in either the Greek or the Shakespearian sense) and no devotional or religious poetry (in the seventeenth-century sense).

It’s Tough Growing Up, by C. W. Brister (Broadman, 128 pp., $2.95). Helpful both to teen-agers and to adults who wish to communicate more effectively with them. Contemporary in idiom and sensitive to youth’s agonies, without being patronizing. Biblical but not preachy.

Family Problems and What to Do About Them, by Wallace Denton (Westminster, 158 pp., paperback, $2.85). Takes a good-humored look at ordinary family problems and offers concrete solutions. Sociologically oriented.

Contemporary Sexual Morality, by John F. Dedek (Sheed and Ward, 170 pp., $5.95). A priest’s study of modern sexual mores. Includes arguments from Catholic tradition, and current debate within the Roman church.

Right or Wrong?, by T. B. Matson and William M. Pinson, Jr. (Broadman, 128 pp., $3.50), and The Parent Slant, by Chester E. Swor (Broadman, 139 pp., $3.95). The first attempts to guide teen-agers into making mature, moral decisions. The second attempts to guide parents into making sound decisions in handling teen-agers. Both are rather prosaic.

The Church in Three Tenses, by Ben F. Meyer (Doubleday, 174 pp., $5.95). To understand the present and predict the future, we need to know the past. The author, a former Jesuit, pursues this thesis in relation to the Church and its mission.

Ministry in the Seventies, by John E. Biersdorf (IDOC, 432 S. Park Ave., New York City 10016, 127 pp., paperback, $3.95). Several persons related to the Department of Ministry of the National Council of Churches give their approaches to the title topic.

Religion in America, 1971, edited by George Gallup, Jr., and John O. Davies, III (Gallup, Princeton, N. J., 81 pp., paperback, $5). Several recent Gallup polls on religious beliefs are given in full. Useful corrective to over-generalization. For example, slightly more college students “believe that religion can answer all or most of today’s problems” than believe that religion is “largely old fashioned and out of date.”

Religion USA, by Matthew Fox (Listening Press, 452 pp., paperback, $3.65). An exhaustive study of every mention of religion in all sections of Time magazine for every issue of 1958. Some will find it fascinating, as much for what the author makes of Time as for what Time made of religion.

I and II Kings: A Commentary, by John Gray (Westminster, 802 pp., $15). A new and fully revised edition of a standard scholarly work.

The Wilderness Journey, by Charles H. Stevens (Moody, 272 pp., $4.95). “My purpose in writing this book is to give an overall, comprehensive view of God’s redemptive plan as outlined and dramatized in the account of Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan.” This might interest someone who is interested in Old Testament typology but knows little about it.

The Judgment of Jonah, by Jacques Ellul (Eerdmans, 103 pp., $1.95). A non-technical commentary emphasizing the prophetic nature of the Book of Jonah more than the tale of adventure it recounts.

Movement of Destiny, by LeRoy Edwin Froom (Review and Herald, 700 pp., $9.95). A thorough historical compilation by a Seventh-day Adventist scholar that focuses on christological and soteriological controversies within the movement. Emphasizes the eventual basic conformity to historic orthodoxy on these matters by the denomination as a whole. By no means an overall history of Seventh-day Adventism.

The Symbolic Language of Religion, by Thomas Fawcett (Augsburg, 288 pp., $6.50). In part one Fawcett examines myth, allegory, metaphor, and simile. In part two he discusses these terms in relation to religious language, giving examples (most from the Bible) of their religious usages, as in the imagery of Ezekiel 28. Fawcett concludes in part three that the twentieth century is seeing the collapse of religious symbolism: “A change has taken place in our time such that the language in which man’s perception of the sacred was previously couched has become for many people impossible to understand.” And this, he says, has led to a collapse of faith. An interesting, well-footnoted work on a currently important critical topic.

You Want to Change the World? So Change It!, by Paul Simon (Nelson, 108 pp., paperback, $1.95). Written by the lieutenant-governor of Illinois, the book deals with various political issues of our time and how, working within the system, young people can do something about them. Unfortunately, what is said is rather simplistic, touching only the surface of “the basic issues.”

Leave It to the Spirit, by John Killinger (Harper & Row, 235 pp., $6.95). What should be done about worship? The author contends that this is one of the vital questions facing the Church. He discusses it in relation to various mediums—language, dance, games, drama, as well as sermon.

Great Dialecticians in Modern Christian Thought, by Ernest B. Koenker (Augsburg, 158 pp., $5.95). Examines, with extensive footnotes, the thought systems of various men from Plato (a “modern Christian” thinker?) to Werner Elert. The chapters are sketchy; they skim the surface of these men’s thoughts and read like term papers. But the book would be valuable to those who are unfamiliar with the dialectics of such thinkers as Pascal and Barth and Hegel.

Schweitzer: Prophet of Radical Theology, by Jackson Lee Ice (Westminster, 208 pp., $7.50). An appreciative and scholarly overview of Albert Schweitzer’s highly unorthodox religious thought.

My Wife Made Me a Polygamist, by Walter Trobisch (Inter-Varsity, 53 pp., paperback, $.95) Written for African couples; also speaks to the problem of “successive polygamy”—marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

The Flight From Creation, by Gustaf Wingren (Augsburg, 91 pp., $2.50). A well-known Swedish theologian gives a highly personal critique of theologies that de-emphasize the first article of the Apostles’ Creed. He says it is the doctrine of God as Creator that gives warrant for Christian social concern, since the Gospel “speaks primarily to the individual.”

Why I Am Still a Christian, edited by E. N. Blaiklock (Zondervan, 176 pp., paperback, $1.95). Testimonies of twelve scholars on the title subject, designed for non-Christians. Interestingly, most of the authors quote C. S. Lewis.

The Waiting Game, by Roy Fairchild (Nelson, 102 pp., paperback, $1.95). Explores the relation between the past, present, and future of living. A balanced life is one lived in the present, motivated toward the future (as in goals), and taught by the past. Helpful for understanding and combating the restlessness of our age.

Are Women Human?, by Dorothy L. Sayers (Eerdmans, 47 pp., paperback, $1.25). Answering the title question, originally the title of an address to a Women’s Society in 1938, Miss Sayers might reply: “Are human beings human?” In her own words: “Indeed, it is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human, and that there is very little mystery about either sex, except the exasperating mysteriousness of human beings in general.” A sane, delightful, common-sensical pre-answer to today’s militant feminists.

The Mark of Cain: An Anatomy of Jealousy, by Marguerite and Willard Beecher (Harper & Row, 193 pp., $5.95). Though not from an evangelical perspective, provides valuable insight into this widespread and emotionally crippling sin.

Man, Milieu and Mission in Argentina, by Arno W. Enns (Eerdmans, 258 pp., paperback, $3.95). Compares the growth of ten of the larger Protestant groups. Worthwhile evaluations and suggestions for those concerned with church growth anywhere.

Jesus in His Time, by Hans Jurger Schultz (Fortress, 148 pp., paperback, $3.75). Helpful essays, written on the popular level by experts, that survey the social, political, and religious backgrounds of Jesus’ Palestine.

A New Ethic for a New Earth, edited by Glenn C. Stone (Friendship, 176 pp., paperback, $1.95), and Technethics, by Norman J. Faramelli (Friendship, 160 pp., paperback, $1.75). Two more books to add to the ever-increasing ecology library. More or less biblically oriented.

Aspects of the Thought of Teilhard de Chardin, by Francis J. Klauder (Christopher, 151 pp., $4.95). A good introduction for those who know little of Teilhard’s philosophy.

Learning Is Change, by Martha M. Leypoldt (Judson, 158 pp., paperback, $2.95). Here’s hope for the despairing teacher of adults. Step-by-step exercises to promote real learning in church and home Bible-study groups. Exceptionally practical.

The Audio-Visual Man, edited by Pierre Babin (Pflaum, 218 pp., paperback, $5.95). A sophisticated approach to media and religious education. Good for the serious student of audio-visuals.

The Mystery and Magic of the Occult, by John Stevens Kerr (Fortress, 152 pp., paperback, $3.50). A sympathetic analysis of the occult from a neutral observer. The publisher says, “Give this book to a Sagittarian, Libra, or confirmed skeptic. Whatever their sign, young people and adults will find [it] irresistible.”

Will the world undergo a great revival before the end of the age? This possibility is increasingly discussed among Christians who believe that the last convulsive struggles of our civilization have begun.

Scripture seems to allude to a world revival, though this interpretation is by no means unanimous. Many of the references are bound up with other historical situations, such as the return of the Jews from captivity and the restoration of their nation. How one views the millennium, tribulation, and rapture must also be taken into account. The complexity of these prophecies makes any conclusion tentative. Yet recognizing that we now see through the glass darkly, we can find some vague suggestions of a last mighty spiritual awakening.

1. The revival will be a universal outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Church in all parts of the world will feel the overflow of God’s presence.

There is reason to think that the promised outpouring of the Spirit upon “all flesh” (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17) has not been completed. Of course, in potential that first Pentecostal visitation reached to all peoples. This was signified by the witness of the Spirit-filled disciples to persons from “every nation under heaven” present in Jerusalem (Acts 2:9–11). But in actual extent that outpouring was confined to the city. As the Church gradually moved out in the strength of the Holy Spirit, the flame spread to Judea, to Samaria, and finally to many distant places of the civilized world. Still, complete fulfillment of the prophecy awaits a glorious day to come.

A spiritual awakening around the world would be in keeping with the all-embracing love of God. It would give dramatic notice of the extent of the gospel mandate, “to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

According to this reasoning, the church age began and will end in a mighty spiritual baptism. What happened at the first Pentecost may be seen as the “early” display of the refreshing rain from heaven, while the closing epic is the “latter rain” (Joel 2:23; Jas. 5:7; Zach. 10:1; Hosea 6:3). Water or rain is often symbolic of the Holy Spirit (e.g. John 7:37–39).

2. Strange demonstrations of power over nature will accompany the revival. In describing the Spirit’s outpouring, Joel foretells “wonders in the heavens and in the earth,” “blood and fire and pillars of smoke,” “the sun turned into darkness and the moon into blood” (Joel 2:30, 31; Acts 2:19, 20). These phenomena are not mentioned in the account of the first Pentecost; apparently they are yet to occur.

Jesus spoke of days immediately “after the tribulation” in similar terms, adding that “the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt. 24:29; cf. Rev. 6:12, 13). It seems that God will summon the forces of nature to bear witness to what is happening on the earth.

Adding to the spectacle, some people will have the power to perform wondrous deeds, such as turning waters to blood (Rev. 11:6; cf. Gal. 3:5). Naturally Satan will do what he can to counterfeit what he knows is real. We are warned of “false Christs” and “false prophets” of this time who will “show great signs and wonders” to deceive the elect (Matt. 24:24; cf. Exod. 7:10–12; Matt. 7:15–20; 2 Thess. 2:9, 10). The sensory appeal is always fraught with danger, which is all the more reason why we are exhausted to try the spirits (1 John 4:1–3).

3. The revival will come during a time of unprecedented tribulation. It seems that those fearful conditions of the last days described intermittently in Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 to 17 will characterize the period, And things will get worse as the end approaches (cf. 2 Tim. 3:12, 13; 2 Thess. 2:1–3).

Famines, pestilences, and earthquakes of staggering proportions will occur. Wars and intrigue will fill the earth, and hate will bind the hearts of men. No one will feel secure. As moral integrity breaks down, apostasy in the church will increase. Those who do not conform to the spirit of the age will be hard pressed, and many will be martyred. Clearly, the cost of discipleship will be high.

Yet amid this terrible adversity, Scripture seems to say, revival will sweep across the earth. When God’s “judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness” (Isa. 26:9). Dreadful calamities will mingle with awesome displays of salvation—the terrors will actually create an environment for earnest heart-searching. Not everyone will turn to God. Some unrepentant men may become even more brazen in their sin. But the world will be made to confront as never before the cross of Jesus Christ.

How it all will end is not clear. Possibly the revival will cease and there will be “a falling away” before the Lord returns (2 Thess. 2:3). Some Bible students believe that the worst tribulation will come after the Church is caught up. Others think Christians will be taken out of the world midway through this dreadful period.

Scripture gives us no reason to think that the last great revival will avert the coming catastrophe. The line of no return will have already been passed. Judgment is certain. Revival may delay but not prevent the final day of reckoning.

4. Through the purging of revival. God’s people will be brought to the true beauty of holiness. Clearly our Lord expects to present his bride unto himself a purified people (Eph. 5:26, 27). The trials of the last days will serve as fires to refine the gold of Christian character. Out of them the bride of Christ, the Church, will emerge ready for the marriage supper (Dan. 12:10; Rev. 19:7). The “latter rain” of the Spirit is intended to bring “the precious fruit” of the Church to maturity (Jas. 5:7; cf. Song of Sol. 2).

The Church should not fear affliction, though it cause suffering and even death. Suffering may be necessary to convince us that man does not live by bread alone. Without hardships, probably few of us would learn much about the deeper things of God.

It is also reasonable to believe that the outpouring of the Spirit will multiply the manifestation of gifts of ministry in the Church (cf. Eph. 4:7–11; Rom. 16:6–8; 1 Cor. 12:4–11; 1 Pet. 4:10, 11). This would further call attention to the momentous happening on earth.

5. The revival will produce a tremendous ingathering of souls. Evangelism of the lost, though different from renewal in the Church, flows out of the same Spirit. The blessing of Pentecost naturally brings people to call upon the name of the Lord for salvation (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21).

Not only does revival exalt the claims of Christ; it also prepares workers for the harvest. People who are full of the Holy Spirit are committed to God’s work. They want to be where the action is, and there is no greater work than bringing the Gospel to men. This is why Jesus came, into the world (Luke 19:10), and he sends his disciples on the same mission (John 17:18; Matt. 28:19, 20).

Significantly, Jesus said that the fulfillment of that mission would precede his return: “This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:24; cf. Luke 12:36, 37; 14:15–23). That the Gospel will eventually penetrate “every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” is clear from descriptions given us of heaven (Rev. 5:9; cf. 7:9). Could not this happen through a final world revival?

Many believe that Jews will be among the multitudes that turn to Christ. At least, many prophecies speak of their general repentance and acceptance of the Messiah (e.g. Ezek. 20:43, 44; Jer. 31:34; Rom. 11:24), and of God’s pardon and blessing (e.g. Jer. 31:27–34; 32:37–33:26; Ezek. 16:60–63; 37:1–28; Hos. 6:1, 2). Revival seems a logical time for this to happen. Pretribulationists might put the Jewish awakening after the rapture of the Church, making a great deal of Romans 11:25 and 26, which speaks of Israel’s being saved when the fullness of the Gentiles is come. This passage could, however, serve equally well to support the idea of revival before Christ comes again.

The greatest day of evangelism is yet to be. The harvesting may be short in duration, and may require great sacrifice, but it will be the most far-reaching acceptance of the Gospel this world has ever seen.

6. The revival will prepare the way for the coming of the King. Our Lord’s return may be waiting now on this spiritual revolution. “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and has long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient, stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (Jas. 5:7, 8; cf. 2 Pet. 3:9, 10).

Anticipation of this day is a summons to action. We should cast off everything that blocks the flow of the Holy Spirit and should commit ourselves to being about the Father’s business. World evangelism is the responsibility in which our lives should be centered. Whatever his gifts, every Christian is needed in the witness of the Gospel to all men.

Prayer is our greatest resource. The prophet reminds us, “Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain” (Zech. 10:1). “When the tongue faileth for thirst,” God says, “I will open rivers in the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys” (Isa. 41:17, 18; cf. 44:3). Surely it is time to “seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness” upon us (Hos. 10:12; cf. Joel 2:17; Acts 1:14). There is no other way to bring life to the Church and hope to the barren fields of the world.

Many people sense that something great is on the horizon. The world seems headed toward a catastrophic climax of history. The forces of evil are becoming more sinister and aggressive, and on our present course the dissolution of society seems inevitable. At the same time there are increasing signs of spiritual awakening. Never has there been more yearning by more people for spiritual reality, nor has the Church ever had the means it now has to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Does this mean that there will soon be a world revival, and that the coming of the Lord is imminent? We cannot know. But it does appear that this long awaited event is now an exciting possibility.

Certainly this is no time for despair. The King’s coming is certain. And in preparation for his return we may see the greatest movement of the Holy Spirit since the beginning of the Church.

The Ultimate Spring Of Solitude

He who consciously or unconsciously has chosen to ignore God is an orphan in the universe, that is, in God’s creation. It is only natural that he should feel lonely to the point of dejection. He may on occasion and for a time seek solace in man-made techniques of self-help. The fact remains, however, that all such techniques take their stand on the purely natural. They are out of God’s context. Their appeal is to some kind of energy and resourcefulness which makes of man the principle and end of all things. Ultimately they are bound to fail and leave a man alone in depression of spirit and heaviness of heart. Thus does self-centeredness generate the bitterness of solitude.… What God has initiated and what He has given cannot be ignored.

It is such negation of God, and self-centered denial of his own distinctive endowment on the part of man, that the Bible characterizes as sin. Sin’s final ground is a pride that repudiates God’s purpose. Hence a loss of purposiveness in which we … [detect] a manifestation of solitude. Indeed, self-centeredness defeats its own purpose as freedom for God and in God is perverted into freedom from God.

In this context, then, it does become clear that the ultimate spring of all the miseries born of solitude is sin in the Biblical sense of the word. The soul which has cast its lot with self instead of with God is affected in two essential ways, namely, with reference to will, and with reference to intellect. The will’s normal function according to God is to choose, to decide, to act in terms of love. The intellect’s normal function is to know what is at stake in terms of right understanding. It stands to reason that when both these functions work according to the wrong approach of self-centeredness, a man no longer loves aright. His position accordingly borders on insanity. He fails to apprehend this created world and himself as upheld every moment by the sustaining will of God and accordingly dependent on Him for his existence. Details out of context then monopolize his attention as would mere items on a list. The true picture of life is thereby hidden from him. Indeed a man cannot see anything aright apart from the totality to which it belongs, as is the case of features in a human face. Hence a sense of alienation and abandonment whose bitter fruit is solitude.—EMILE CAILLIET, Alone at High Noon (Zondervan, © 1971), pages 87–89. Used by permission.

Robert E. Coleman is McCreless Professor of Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary. Wilmore, Kentucky. He has the M.Th. (Princeton Seminary) and the Ph.D. (the University of Iowa). He is the author of eight books.

Until Babel, all the inhabitants of the earth were “of one language and of one speech” (Gen. 11:1). Linguistically, there was no hindrance to communication, to development of man’s intellectual powers, to progress. To have a common language is to have a means of storing and transmitting knowledge in which all men can share. Education and scientific inquiry can feed upon themselves and grow by leaps and bounds. But this potential for an explosion of knowledge was never realized. The reason was that men chose self-aggrandizement and the perpetuation of geographical unity in defiance of God’s command (“lest we be scattered abroad”—cf. Genesis 9:1, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”). “The way they are starting to behave,” God noted, “nothing they plan will be impossible for them.” In judgment God confused men’s language so that they could no longer understand one another. Unanimity gave way to confusion, geographical unity to dispersion.

The project on the plains of Shinar ground to a halt, but language diversification has continued ever since. Despite the conservative influence of writing, all living languages change with use. Today four to five thousand different languages are spoken in the world. Africa has 1,000; the South Pacific area includes at least 1,200 more. Still, since Babel God has continued to use language as the medium of his revelation to men. He commanded the prophets and later the apostles to speak and to write, using the language at hand. Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek.

Jesus Christ was “a prophet mighty in word” (Luke 24:19). He told his followers that what they heard him say was “not mine, but the Father’s which sent me” (John 14:24), and he claimed permanence for his statements—“My words shall not pass away” (Matt. 24:35). His utterances were instrumental to salvation—“He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life” (John 5:24). They were also basic to judgment—“He that … receiveth not my words hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48). Clearly Jesus considered human language adequate to convey God’s thoughts: “I have given them the words thou gavest me” (John 17:8). And to speak God’s words, Jesus used Western Aramaic, the principal language of most of his hearers. In his encounter with Saul on the road to Damascus, Christ used not the language of Paul’s citizenship, Latin, nor that of his higher education, Greek, but the language of his home, Aramaic. And Paul never forgot that; twenty-two years later he included it in his account of his conversion (Acts 26:14).

The world into which Christ sent his disciples to preach the Gospel was a world of many different languages. In the Mediterranean-centered Roman empire, though Greek was the language of commerce and culture and Latin the language of the spreading Roman military power, many other local languages were also in common use (cf. Acts 2:9–11; 14:11; 18:1–6). Beyond the confines of the Roman empire still other languages were spoken.

Before launching out on this formidable sea of languages, the disciples were to receive power from the Holy Spirit. The occasion of his coming was the feast of Pentecost, when Jews of the dispersion and proselytes from east and west of Palestine gathered in Jerusalem. In addition to speaking either Aramaic or Greek, both familiar languages to the bilingual Galilean apostles, the visiting pilgrims spoke as mother tongues a variety of local languages that were also used in praising God during the great festivals in Jerusalem. At Pentecost, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, and Rome, as well as Cretes and Arabians, heard from the disciples the wonderful works of God in their native languages (Acts 2:4–11). This was the divinely ordered and Spirit-directed launching of the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel. The same God who had confused the languages at Babel provided an answer to Babel: The diversified languages of men were to be used to convey God’s truth, even where there was a common trade language.

While the confusion of tongues at Babel hindered men from communicating with one another, it was never intended to limit communication between God and men. If human language is adequate to convey God’s thoughts to men, then it is certainly adequate to express man’s praise to God. In the Book of Revelation, the gift of language, “wherewith we bless God” (Jas. 3:9), fulfills its highest purpose as the redeemed “out of every language” (Rev. 5:7) and “of all tongues” (7:9) acclaim the glories of Jesus Christ. The reappearance in Revelation’s great culminative drama of the multiplied languages of earth is not incidental; as languages have been an integral part of earth’s human scene, so they are an essential element of God’s great victory in Jesus Christ. It seems likely that many languages will actually be heard. Already God is worshiped in hundreds of different languages around the world; the endtime drama will be more, not less, glorious. On that day when spirits are unencumbered and lips unfettered, the language each man uses may well be the language of his birth.

There is nothing to suggest that on that occasion all will speak the same language. Nor is any one language or group of languages singled out for special mention. God, who is no respecter of persons, is also no respecter of languages. Men often judge languages according to social status, national prestige, number of speakers, and international usefulness but discrimination based on language will be out of place in the presence of Jesus Christ, who while on earth spoke a despised dialect of Aramaic. Each language offers facilities for ascribing praise to Jesus Christ that no other language exactly duplicates. Indeed, to describe in any adequate way the glories of our God and of his Christ will require the combined resources of all earth’s languages.

What does all this mean for worldwide proclamation of the Gospel today? Language, whether spoken or written, is still our most effective means of communicating with others. Literature, radio, and television require language and extend its outreach. The witness of a man’s life, unaccompanied by words, may be inadequate or misunderstood.

But language fails if the speaker does not use it in a way that gets his message through to the hearer. “Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood,” Paul wrote, “how shall it be known what is spoken?” (1 Cor. 14:9)? What can the Christian do who shares Paul’s desire “that I may make it clear, as I ought to speak” (Col. 4:3, 4)? Precedent and precept suggest certain principles: The language of the hearer determines the language of communication. The mother tongue has priority, even in multiple-language situations. The responsibility of making the message plain, of using words easy to understand, and, if need be, of learning other languages, rests with Christ’s ambassadors, not with those to whom they go.

Since God has chosen not to give each language community a direct revelation from heaven in its own language, but to send messengers with the original revelation from one center to all the world, translation of the message into each language is necessary. And since all living languages change, translations periodically need revision.

God has given man the ability not only to speak his own language but also to learn to speak others. Not all men have the same ability to learn foreign languages, of course, but God’s promise to Moses—“I will be with thy mouth” (Exod. 4:12)—is still valid. In addition, God has provided specialized help for anyone going anywhere in the world to learn any language spoken by men. Many institutions around the world give courses in linguistics; Wycliffe Bible Translators, for example, and its affiliate, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, offer linguistic training in America, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.

Some would-be missionaries have tried to evade language-learning by writing off some language groups as too small to warrant the effort. Some have suggested teaching everyone else English, a far greater task than learning and using foreign languages. Some have resorted to using interpreters, with all their limitations and disadvantages. Some have settled for a trade language, content with reaching many superficially. But the precedent of God and the teaching of Scripture are quite clear: languages are not to be avoided but to be used for the communication of the Gospel and the glory of God.

If the millions of people speaking one of the more than 2,000 languages still without the Scriptures are not reached in this generation, it will not be for lack of means or methods, but simply for lack of obedience to the divine commission.

George M. Cowan is president of Wycliffe Bible Translators. He helped translate the New Testament for the Mazateco tribe of Mexico. He has the Th.M. (Dallas Seminary) and the M.A. (the University of North Dakota).

Perhaps one of the keenest reminders of our Christian fallibility is that the Lord’s Supper, instituted as a simple act promoting fellowship, has become the subject of complicated debate and blatant division. Yet through all the controversy, certain indisputable biblical realities about the Supper still stand as a basis for unity and a starting point for profitable use.

1. The Supper was instituted by our Lord. This means it is not an option or luxury. Even if only out of obedience—not the worst of reasons—Christians are to be present at it. But another meaning is that the Supper is not a useless ceremony, like many of the things men institute. The Lord was not demanding obedience merely for its own sake; he was demanding it for our good. He had a purpose. A last implication is that no matter what we think about the “real presence,” the Lord is surely host at his own table, and we come as his guests. The Supper is a privilege as well as a duty and benefit. It is the Lord’s.

2. The Lord’s Supper was instituted in a Passover setting. This yields many valuable insights. It establishes a relation with God’s congregation or people in the Old Testament. It suggests the interrelation of type and antitype, or of prophecy and fulfillment. It brings into focus the continuity of God’s plan and its execution. Above all, it directs attention to the fact that God’s people in both Old Testament and New became his people by his own act of deliverance. As the Passover reenacts the meal on the eve of the redemption out of Egypt, so the Lord’s Supper reenacts the meal on the eve of liberation from sin and death. On the one hand is the Passover lamb, on the other hand the Lamb of God.

3. This leads on to the next consideration, that the Lord’s Supper commemorates the vicarious act of Christ, the breaking of his body and shedding of his blood, that effected our salvation. The Supper is a declaration of the Gospel; that is why Augustine could call it a “visible word.” The sign corresponds visibly to what is signified: the broken bread to the broken body, the outpoured wine to the shed blood. Yet it is also the Lord who breaks and pours out. He gave himself. He did so willingly, in love. He did so as the Lord. We are not dealing, then, merely with a crucified Lord, remembered like any other great figure of the past. The Lord who gave himself in sovereignty is risen in sovereignty. He is host at his own commemoration.

The solemnity of proclaiming his substitutionary work should not subdue the note of joy and triumph. The early Church liked to call the Supper the Eucharist, and Zwingli too was fond of this title. The word simply means thanksgiving. Like the Passover, the Lord’s Supper is a feast. It is a feast of liberation. The cost was great—broken bread and poured out wine do not let us forget that. But the sacrifice was not in vain. And so we rejoice at the victory won, and give praise and thanks to the victor—but not as to a hero who perished in the moment of victory. Giving thanks for his precious death, we are aware also of his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension. The solemnity of the Supper is not gloom or sadness. It is the solemnity of overwhelming, abiding joy. If we miss the joy, we miss the ultimate meaning.

4. Taking food is the very essence of a supper. Hence the bread and wine are not just broken and outpoured: they are given to Christ’s people to eat and drink. In this vivid way, the Supper shows us that it is of the essence of the Christian life to receive Christ crucified and risen, and to partake of him: “This is my body; take, eat.”

Now obviously this is not cannibalism (though in a gross and perhaps malicious misunderstanding the early Christians were accused of holding cannibal feasts). Yet efforts to define precisely what is meant here have led to much mystification and confusion, often hindering a proper or profitable use of the Supper. If exact formulation is difficult, perhaps we may content ourselves with two very simple, basic truths about the eating.

The first is that Christ himself is the believer’s necessary food. The Christian life cannot begin without him, nor can it go on without him. Christ is our life. He is the bread of life. These biblical truths are vividly and concretely expressed in the taking of bread and wine. The Lord who gave himself and rose again for us gives us the new life. But he does not then leave us to our own resources; he also provides our continuing nourishment and strength, without which we could no more go on than we could live our daily lives without meals. The Supper directs us to Christ that we may feed on him.

The second basic truth is that receiving is a necessary part of nourishment. An essential part of the rite as the Lord instituted it is that we take and eat. Now there is a very real sense in which our receiving or appropriating Christ as our nourishment is God’s work. But this does not mean it is not also our own act. The visible word of the Lord’s Supper sets before us the one and all-sufficient sacrifice on which our salvation rests. It also sets before us our responsibility of entering into this salvation by receiving Christ, and of nourishing ourselves in it by continual receiving.

This is a reminder that if the Supper is marked by joy and thanksgiving for the finished work, it is also marked by the penitence and faith that are the means of receiving. Inner receiving is not an automatic result of the outer partaking of bread and wine. Just as Christ can be received at the first only as we repent of sin and trust in him, so he can be received for sustenance only as we repent and place in him our whole faith and confidence. As Augustine so aptly put it in a sentence that the reformers often quoted: “Believe, and thou hast eaten.”

This is the reason for what is often called the “fencing” of the table. Paul commanded this when he asked that we examine ourselves before presuming to eat and drink. To neglect this, to treat the Supper lightly, to view it as a mechanical device, is to make it hurtful instead of helpful. On the other hand, “fencing” the table does not mean that we have to make ourselves worthy before we dare receive. This would mean perpetual banishment; no one is ever worthy to receive Christ. But the Christ who came to justify the unjust makes no such condition for receiving him. What he does require is that we recognize our intrinsic unworthiness, come with penitence and faith, and stretch out our empty hands to receive for ourselves what he so bountifully provides.

5. The Lord’s Supper is also an expression, pledge, and means of fellowship. This is why “Holy Communion” is a common title. A meal is by nature an opportunity for fellowship, as we can see from the meals our Lord shared with the disciples. Fellowship with the Lord is holy fellowship, and it is to this also that Christ invites us when he asks us to gather at his table. He invites us to the holy fellowship that is grounded in his atoning work, to the restored fellowship of those who are reconciled to God and one another by Christ, to the family fellowship of God’s adopted children in and through their brother, the only-begotten Son of God.

This fellowship is with God himself in Christ. It is to God that we are first reconciled, and we are adopted into his family. Naturally, the Lord’s Supper is not the only means of fellowship with God. Yet it forms a focus of this fellowship and is a means of expressing and strengthening it. The whole Christian life is a life of constant fellowship with God, a communion fellowship that is especially shown and promoted in prayer, worship, reading the Scriptures, and hearing God’s word. The Lord’s Supper is one of these special occasions when the Lord specifically gathers his people to himself, when other thoughts and things should be left behind, when we know the Lord is with us in a particular way, when both the fellowship itself and our awareness of it are heightened.

Yet our fellowship, being with him, is also with one another. The Lord’s Supper is the family meal of God’s people. Being reconciled to God, we are also reconciled to our fellow men, and we can thus gather with them in a new fellowship, a fraternal meeting in which all are sinners but all are forgiven sinners. This fellowship is gathered out of every conceivable race and class and age and occupation; yet despite the great diversity, all are one in Jesus Christ. Here again the fellowship of believers is not restricted to the Supper. It is an abiding fellowship. But it too finds special focus in Christian work and Christian meetings that both express it and enrich it. The Lord’s Supper is a special season of fellowship when Christians are summoned by their Lord to their own special meal at their own special table as members of the Lord’s own special family.

An implication of this, of course, is that love, as well as joy and faith, is a distinctive mark of the Supper. This is the forgiving love of those who know they are forgiven. It is the reconciling love of those whose reconciliation Christ has achieved. It is a unifying love transcending all distinctions. Love is one of the things we must ask about before coming to the table. No hostilities or grudges or dissension should be brought here. There must be penitence for lack of love. Yet we do not have to love as a prerequisite for coming. We come expressing love and seeking love and growing in love: love for God because he first loved us: love for one another because we are brethren in the Son of his love.

6. A final element to note is that the Lord’s Supper points not only to the past, Christ’s finished work; and not only to the present, the developing life of faith and fellowship; but also to the future, the glorious consummation when Christ comes again. Our Lord made this plain at the institution of the Supper when he looked ahead to the final banquet in the Kingdom of God. Paul, too, speaks of observing the Lord’s Supper until He comes. The Supper is to be celebrated during this time between the comings, but it is not an end in itself. It points beyond itself to the greater meal when all God’s ways and works will be fulfilled and God’s people will gather in the perfected fellowship of redemption.

This means we should gather at the table, not only with a backward look at the first coming, but also with a forward look to the second. Part of the Gospel set forth by this visible word is that the Lord will come. The Lord who, having died, is alive for evermore, the Lord who is host at his table to feed and strengthen his people, is also the Lord who will come again as king and judge in the fullness of his kingdom. The Supper is a pledge, a foretaste, an anticipation of that best of God which is yet to be.

This means finally that we are also to receive the Supper with expectancy and hope. This hope is not the hoping-against-hope of the world, but the sure and certain hope of one who has already seen the decisive victory won. It is not a whistling in the dark but a singing in anticipation. On the basis of promises fulfilled, we rely on promises yet to be fulfilled. At the Supper we look away from the illusory hopes and transitory realities of the world. We widen and renew our perspectives. We lift up our heads, knowing that our redemption cannot be long delayed. We learn afresh that as all things are from him and by him, so they are also to him.

He who is the world’s hope is already before us and with us. He has given us this table, insignificant and even pointless in the eyes of secular man, but eloquent to believers as a sign of things past and things present and things to come. We therefore partake in joyful hope as well as faith and love. As we are confirmed in faith and enriched in love in this holy fellowship, so we are renewed in confident hope.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley is professor of church history and historical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge University and the Ph.D. and D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh. He is the translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

Everybody recognizes that our world is staggering beneath a load of troubles. We are not the first to feel this way, at many points in history people have thought that conditions could hardly get any worse. But somehow our sense of the woes of the world seems particularly acute.

In such a time, some men will rise up, like the Prophet Jeremiah, to condemn men and governments as renegades and apostates, and to threaten that unless there is a return to old and accepted values, a terrible catastrophe will overtake the world. At the same time, others will hold forth the hope—perhaps better called the dream—that the time of troubles will somehow give way to a wonderful, spiritual Golden Age.

The idea of a Golden Age has a long history. We meet it in Virgil. The well-known New England Christmas carol (composed by a Unitarian) “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” looks forward to a time when “through the ever-circling years/Comes round the Age of Gold.” People who have been strongly influenced by biblical teachings, which hold that history has a beginning (Creation) and a definite end (the Last Judgment), cannot so easily fall into the cyclic pattern with its hope for a returning Age of Gold. Yet when biblically influenced people cut their ties to Scripture as the final standard and merely use scriptural ideas as springboards for their own speculation, the Golden Age idea crops up again, though in a different form.

The idea that the wonderful spiritual age will come, not as a recurrence of an ancient Golden Age, but as the fulfillment of an ongoing process, seems to combine the biblical motif of irreversible history with man’s age-old dream of recovering a lost world of innocence, where there is no knowledge of good and evil, no sin, and a fortiori no judgment. That this age will be a “Third Age” corresponding to a trinitarian pattern was first taught by the medieval abbot Joachim of Floris (d. 1202). Joachim, who lived in Italy during the epic struggle between Roman popes and “Holy Roman” emperors for the heritage of Universal Rome, thought the turmoil he observed was clear evidence that the old age was passing and a new one was about to break in.

Joachim believed in the Holy Trinity, and he was aware that the new dispensation of Grace had succeeded that of the Law, and so he equated the dispensation of Law with God the Father and that of Grace with God the Son. Logically enough, then, he looked for a third dispensation of the Holy Spirit. His calculations based on numerical references in the Book of Daniel persuaded him that this Third Age was about to dawn. These chronological predictions, like so many others, have been proven wrong, but Joachim’s vision of the Third Age has reappeared again and again, usually in secularized and anti-Christian forms.

Joachim’s views appealed to many of the most sensitive and spiritual natures of his day, and those who espoused them quarreled bitterly with the papal hierarchy. From the perspective of biblical Christianity (as well as of the orthodoxy of his day), Joachim appears to have fallen into the error of a modalistic conception of the Trinity—that is, the view that at one time God reveals himself as Father, at another as Son, at a third as Holy Spirit, but that the Persons are only successive manifestations and do not co-exist, cooperate, and commune with one another throughout eternity. Joachim failed to see that all three divine Persons acted in both Old and New Testament times and continued to act in his day (as they do in ours).

In addition, Joachim relativized the importance of the work of Christ; he taught that it must be superseded by something better, the Third Age of the fullness of the Spirit. He used many analogies to explain this Third Age of the Spirit: in the Old Testament period, God had ruled by compulsion; in the New, by persuasion; but in the Third, he would rule by inspiration. The promise of Jeremiah 31:33, that the Law will be written in the hearts of men, Joachim took to refer to the Third Age, in which men would act spontaneously to fulfill God’s will. Under the Old Testament, there was only the promise of Grace; under the New, the fulfillment of that promise was enacted and mystically achieved in the sacraments; in the Third Age, there would no longer be types and figures, but complete fulfillment.

In this respect, Joachim advanced the idea of the purification and renewal of all things associated with the Second Coming to the here-and-now. His idea differed from the usual pre-millennial views, however, in that it did not involve a catastrophic judgment. The whole world would, he thought, pass over by a kind of transformation into this blessed condition.

In the centuries since Joachim, the idea of a Third Age—one in which old principles of justice and right, old ideals, and old loyalties will be superseded by entirely new ones—has frequently recurred. Imperial Russia looked upon Moscow as the Third (and ultimate) Rome, and the Russian Communists have perpetuated this messianic vision in a totally de-Christianized form. (The Basel psychologist Arnold Kuenzli maintains that for Karl Marx the Revolution was a secularized, atheistic surrogate for the Second Coming of Christ.) The most famous, or infamous, Third Age is of course the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, which he conceived of in ordinary historical terms as the successor to the Holy Roman and Bismarckian Empires, but which in a deeper sense represented a Messianic Third Age. The messianic mysticism in which the Third Reich indulged heavily was of a secular and apostate kind. All utopian political or social visions tend to embody a kind of apostate political messianism; in some, such as the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, the religious undertones are very faint, but in others they are quite strong.

Hitler is dead and gone, but false messianic mysticism keeps coming back to plague us. The 1968 General Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Uppsala, Sweden, was dominated by the vision of all things made new—a theme taken from Revelation 21:5, but taken out of context, and absolutely bypassing the question of judgment. All visions of peace and plenty are apostate and anti-Christian if they bypass moral and spiritual distinctions and leave no place for the reality of divine judgment. This holds true whether or not the authors claim, as the WCC theologians did, that their visions come from the Bible and represent the outworking of God’s plan for history.

While the ostensibly Christian WCC invokes Scripture to lend a religious sanction to what is in effect this-worldly secular messianism, other voices dispense entirely with the religious element; they promise a new world of joy and wonder just ahead completely independent of God or any divine plan. Thus Professor Charles A. Reich of Yale gives us, in The Greening of America (Random House, 1970), a vision of a new world order arising out of a change in consciousness. In his view, certain aspects of the current scene that seems evil and threatening to those still committed to traditional Christianity—such things as drug use, contempt for productive work, sexual licentiousness, and pornography—are in fact only the signs or even the agents of the new consciousness.

Perhaps the symbolism escaped Professor Reich, or perhaps he is aware of it, but he labels this “new consciousness” Consciousness III. He sees it as following upon Consciousness I (small-town, largely Christian traditional values) and Consciousness II (materialistic, liberal, progress-oriented values), and maintains that it represents the culminating, liberating age of spiritual freedom and maturity.

Reich repudiates Christianity as a failure because it encourages man to expect fulfillment in heaven rather than here and now. He simply discards it. Other prophets claim that a reversal of all Christian values is necessary for the breaking-in of the Third Age. Among these is the “death of God theologian” Thomas J. J. Altizer (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 7, 1966, p. 46). Not until we admit that the God of Scripture is dead, reverse all “satanic” (=biblical) morality, and finally acclaim ourselves as “the Great Humanity Divine” will the wonderful Third Age come.

Altizer, who is consciously operating against a Christian background, develops his vision in a more deliberately anti-Christian way than Reich, but the two have in common a glorification of man through a deliberate reversal of biblical (and rational) norms. With Altizer the reversal is based on principle and is part of a thought-out program, whereas with Reich it simply seems to be happening; but the net effect is that both these theorists, like the infamous practical politician Adolf Hitler before them, repudiate “external” law of every kind and see mankind as immune from any judgment, divine or otherwise.

Things have evidently come a long way since the days of Abbot Joachim, who would have been horrified to see his vision of the Third Age perverted in this way. Yet he unwittingly contributed to it, not only by coining some key phrases, but also by limiting the authority of the Father and the Son to specific periods in (past) history, by relativizing the work of Christ into a figure or type of something still better yet to come, and above all by reducing the reality of divine judgment and the condemnation that will fall on the ungodly to a passing shadow across the bright path into the future.

Faced with one or another of these Third Age dreams, whether from Marx, Hitler, or Charles Reich, the Christian must hold to the biblical principle that the world will be judged. There will be a transformation, but mankind cannot bypass Christ. Although we may spurn him as Saviour, we will still have to face him as Judge. These Third Age visions do away with moral categories: the only standard becomes “openness to the future,” or something similar. This overlooks the fact that the future, until Christ comes again, is just more of the present age, grown a little older, and that the present age is doomed to perish, with all its brilliance, all its misery, all its wisdom, and all its self-deception.

The judgment of God cannot be avoided, nor will any slogans or visions of a Third Age beyond Law and Grace save one in that day. The only salvation lies in faith in the One in whom all the demands of Law are met and all the promises of Grace come true, Jesus Christ: the Christ of Scripture and of history, of prophecy, faith, and hope. He has been slain, he is risen, he has ascended, and he is coming again—not to establish a visionary Third Age beyond good and evil, but to judge the living and the dead. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Harold O. J. Brown is theological secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Lausanne, Switzerland. He has the B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard and the B.D. and Th.M. from Harvard Divinity School.

Events of the past months have illustrated starkly the lack of dynamic leaders in whom the peoples of the world can have confidence. Among the democracies there are no Churchills, no Lincolns, no Washingtons. Britain, France, Germany, Canada, the United States are all beset by staggering problems and appear to be caught in a quagmire. Not one of them has a charismatic leader who has seized the fancy of the multitudes and brought to his nation a captivating vision around which to unite.

In the United States our leaders are long on promises and short on performance. Things just haven’t turned out the way they were supposed to. The economy stumbles along, inflation continues to take its deadly toll, immorality keeps mounting, the churches are in disarray, and apathy and despair seem to be increasing.

There is a hopeful sign. Large numbers of people are being converted to Jesus Christ right now (see lead editorial, page 20). From among them God may produce a new strain of political, economic, and social leadership that will steer the ship of state better in the days ahead. A leadership that could summon people to restraint, sacrifice, and love of neighbor, and instill in them a sense of confidence and hope, could get us started curing our ills.

A century after the gold rush, a not unrelated compulsion is spreading. The stricken are willing to undergo amazing hardships in their quest. Their object? To recover the ark of Noah, thought to lodge on the remote mountains of Greater Ararat in eastern Turkey.

Even relatively sane and sedate professors have been bitten by this bug. On August 17, 1970, at 1:30 P.M. I attained the incredibly difficult 16,946-foot peak of Ararat while engaged in this search, and my eleven-year-old son came within 550 meters of the summit, thus becoming the youngest Westerner ever to reach that altitude on the mountain. We shall doubtless be at it again next month (ark-searching must go on in August, when the ice cap recedes to the maximum).

Why would anyone give up a glorious Alsatian summertime to alternately boil and freeze on a mountain so high that often one can take only ten or fifteen steps before sitting down to recover his breath in the rarefied atmosphere? The answer: because of the tremendous amount of solid evidence that on the mountain the Turks call Agri Dagh, the Mountain of Agony, a substantial vestige of the ark of Noah—if not the ark’s massive hull itself—remains to this very day, frozen in the glacial ice.

Here I do not refer primarily to the accounts of the ark’s survival set down in biblical and classical times. These accounts (from Josephus, the Greek church father Epiphanius, the Koran, Marco Polo, and other sources) and nineteenth-century discoveries of what were said to be ark relics can certainly whet the appetite; but a full-fledged case of ark fever, at least for a member of the hidebound academic community, requires a more substantial base in contemporary testimony. To mention even a major proportion of the recent evidence would be impossible here. But several impressive illustrations can be given.

First, the 1916 Russian expedition. In Delugé et Arche de Noé (second edition, 1953), Andre Parrot reported:

During the First World War, a Russian airman named W. Roskovitsky, flying over Mount Ararat, declared that he had observed on one of the slopes of the mountain the remains of an ancient vessel. The Czar at once organized an expedition, which, we are told, found the remains in question and brought back a description of them which was conclusive as regards their identification.

The source of Parrot’s reference was a 1949 issue of the Journal de Genève, but the same story appeared in several other publications. One of them was the Russian-language periodical Rosseya. The author of this account was a White Russian colonel, Alexander A. Koor. This distinguished officer, archaeologist, and philologue escaped from Russia after the Revolution and reached California by way of Manchuria. A year ago, I spent an afternoon with him and his daughter in their apartment in Menlo Park. I have no doubt of the colonel’s integrity and scholarly precision in conveying factual data. He in turn is fully confident of his sources, having known intimately the officers who gave him accounts of sighting the ark on Ararat.

In late summer of 1952, mining engineer George Jefferson Greene was reconnoitering for his company in a helicopter over Mount Ararat. He distinctly saw the prow of a ship in the ice. Circling within ninety feet of the object, Greene photographed it several times. On returning to the United States, he showed his excellent blown-up photographs to friends and acquaintances, who declare that the pictures unquestionably showed a vessel in the ice and were not retouched or faked.

In 1962, Greene was murdered in British Guiana, apparently for gold, and none of the possessions he brought with him were recovered. But the photographs—six of them—had existed, and some thirty people had seen them. Several of these persons have given sworn testimonies. Dr. Clifford L. Burdick, a geologist, obtained very specific description of the photographs from an oil man who had had contact with Greene in 1954 and who said that even “wooden side planking” could be identified on the photographed vessel. My personal conversations with Dr. Burdick have convinced me of his reliability and scientific acumen.

In August of 1952, the French amateur explorer Fernand Navarra made the first of his three explorations of Greater Ararat. He described that exploration in his book L’Expédition au Mont Ararat (1953). After attaining the summit of Ararat on August 14, 1952, Navarra and his companion began to search for traces of the ark. Here is his account of what they saw:

It was August seventeenth—we had reached an altitude of 13,800 feet and the enormous ice cap stretched before us.… We were surrounded by whiteness, stretching into the distance, yet beneath our eyes was this astonishing patch of blackness within the ice, its outlines sharply defined. Fascinated and intrigued, we began straightway to trace out its shape, mapping out its limits foot by foot: two progressively incurving lines were revealed, which were clearly defined for a distance of three hundred cubits, before meeting in the heart of the glacier. The shape was unmistakably that of a ship’s hull: on either side the edges of the patch curved like the gunwales of a great boat.…

Further confirmation could not be made, for the explorers had no radar equipment.

In July, 1955, Navarra was back on the mountain in company with his eleven-year old son Raphael. With great difficulty they made their way to the area where the father had seen the silhouette in 1952, and, on the suggestion of Raphael, Navarra dug down and found hand-tooled wood. Lacking the tools for extensive digging, he nevertheless cut off and brought back a piece one and a half meters long. He subjected the wood to analysis at the University of Bordeaux and at the Forestry Institute in Madrid, Spain. The Bordeaux report declared that the fossilized wood derived from “an epoch of great antiquity,” and the Madrid analysis estimated the age of the fragment at 5,000 years. (Radiocarbon examinations of the wood have not been useful, owing to contamination of the sample.)

In a second book, Navarra argued that, by process of elimination, the 5,000-year-old hand-tooled wood, at an elevation well above any structure known to have been erected on the mountain, is best accounted for as a portion of the ark.

In 1969. Navarra returned to Ararat with a SEARCH Foundation expedition and uncovered more wood. Recent problems with the SEARCH efforts—specifically the arrest of members of the group last summer in Turkey when they endeavored to climb Ararat’s north face without obtaining official approval—have reduced to nil the chances that this group will fulfill what Navarra calls his “greatest desire.” But an afternoon with him in Rouen confirmed for me the integrity and consistency of his dream. He gave me most valuable information: he drew a map of the location of his finds, with precise elevation figures!

“Well, what of it?” some readers may be thinking. “Even if the ark turned up, do you seriously expect it would convert men, or even change their view of the Bible?” Certainly the discovery of the ark could not be regarded as a final apologetic for the reliability of the Bible. Despite the remarkable and persistent confirmation of biblical history by archaeological finds of the last seventy-five years, one can always find some yet unsolved problem.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss the significance of a recovery of the ark. The most radical biblical criticism since the onset of modern rationalism in the eighteenth century has been directed against the Book of Genesis, and particularly against its allegedly mythical early chapters. Surely a precise confirmation of the historicity of the details of Genesis 6–8 would devalue such interpretations, if not discredit an approach to the biblical materials that seldom gives them even the benefit of doubt Aristotle demanded for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey!

The presence of flood accounts in the traditions of peoples throughout the globe and the place of Noahic events in the Hebrew, Muslim, and Christian religions would create almost universal interest in a major discovery relating to the deluge. The missionary value of the find would be staggering, if only on the level of providing a common ground for the general presentation of the biblical message.

Danielou (Sacramentum Futuri) has correctly observed that Noah’s ark functions as “the instrument of eschatological deliverance.” The stress on eschatology—the last things, the events of the end time—is the prime element in the New Testament treatment of the deluge. Two New Testament passages are determinative: Second Peter 2 and 3, and Matthew 24:37–39 (parallel with Luke 17:26, 27). In Peter, the assurance of Christ’s Second Coming is set over against the scoffing of unbelievers, and the destruction by water in Noah’s day is paralleled with the destruction by fire that will accompany the Lord’s final advent (3:5–7). In Matthew 24 and Luke 17, Noah is likewise mentioned in connection with the end time, the Second Coming of our Lord, and the final judgment. Declares Jesus: “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” The context of both the Matthew and the Luke passages is especially concerned with the signs and conditions preceeding the Second Advent.

A prime mark of God’s dealings with men in Scripture is that he gives them—creatures of earth that they are—visible signs and evidences of his spiritual truth and power. Again and again in biblical history, miracles offer concrete proof of the true God and bring unbelievers and doubters to their senses. Similarly, the “sacramental” devices of the Bible, such as circumcision or the sea (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1–4) in the Old Testament and water, bread, and wine in the New, serve as earthly means of conveying spiritual benefit. This general approach is summed up by Jesus’ question to Nicodemus (John 3:12): “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”

Will “earthly things” be provided as specific signs and warnings of the end of the age? Jesus’ answer is yes, for Matthew 24 and its parallels tell us of natural calamities, wars, and other happenings that will precede his return. Could an even more explicit sign be in preparation for a world that has largely forgotten the days of Noah and cares little for anything but “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”? Might the God of all grace, who so often goes the second mile in offering his truth to the undeserving, not present one final confirmation of his Word to those who “hearing can still hear” before he rings down the curtain on human history?