Red Sky at Morning

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Seldom did the Pharisees and Sadducees combine their efforts. They were antagonistic to each other, but formed an unholy alliance to test Jesus. Acting upon the Jewish superstition that demons can work wonders on earth, but only God can show signs in heaven, they approached him, proposing that he give them such a sign. Jesus replied, "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" The Jews were students of the weather. They knew the portents of the storms, but they ignored the signs of the times.

     Once again men are looking steadfastly up into the heavens. The stars and planets are under constant scrutiny. Scientific genius has unlocked the secrets of space. We have developed a kinship with remote satellites. We can discern the face of the sky. Can we not discern the signs of the times?

     Our world is locked in a grim struggle. The most crucial battle of all ages is being relentlessly fought before our very eyes. There is an ever present danger that we shall forget the main area of conflict by diverting our attention solely to those places where it erupts into physical combat. We are made aware of how our world has shrunken as we are forced to discuss in daily conversation Budapest and Berlin, Matsu and Quemoy. Yet, these are but symptoms of the major war. They are pimples on the face of the world, which betoken the anguished unrest and suffering within. We still feel personally divorced from those places. Other men, speaking strange languages, confront the tanks and guns. But we are directly involved in the titanic struggle which, like a seething volcano, is ever rumbling internally, although it but occasionally bursts through a crevice or thin place in the crust of earth.

     The major conflict is not fought over hills and valleys, but on the battlefield of human hearts. Its chief weapons are not guns and planes, but ideas and ideologies. It is a life and death struggle between two philosophies which seek to capture the whole realm of human reason. You are in this battle, whether you choose to be or not. Your children, and your children's children, for generations yet unborn, will be affected by its outcome. They will be free men and women, or they will be slaves. All you hold dear is at stake! Religious freedom, political liberty, all of the gains in the field of human rights, made through centuries of struggle, are risked in this gigantic contest. It is the first world war, beside which all previous wars, regardless of how designated, become mere local outbursts on the pages of history.

     We face a ruthless foe. Denying the existence of God, the enemy has no regard

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for the sacredness of a covenant, nor for human rights. It is belief in God, and in accountability to a higher power, which makes men hold themselves to account for their words and deeds. Out of the atheistic concept has grown the philosophy that man exists for the state, and not the reverse. Man is a mere cog in a machine, and like a cog, when worn out, can be tossed aside on the scrapheap. This breeds the tyrannical notion that "might makes right," and "the end justifies the means. You cannot destroy concepts with atomic weapons, nor disintegrate ideas with bullets. You must meet a philosophy on its own ground, or be destroyed by it.

     Standing athwart the path of Communism in its bid for world conquest is the only remaining philosophy with even a remote chance of victory. As these two face each other across the "No Man's Land" of human hearts, the deadly seriousness of their impact upon each other becomes apparent. Both were first exemplified in men born of Jewish parentage. This was true of Jesus of Nazareth, who was the son of David, the son of Abraham. It was also true of Karl Marx. But one was the Son of God and the Son of Man, while the other was merely a man's son. Thus, the present struggle is, after all, but one more phase in the age old conflict between the word of God and the philosophy of men.

     Both have committed their systems to mankind in a book. Das Kapital is the bible of Communism, as certainly as the New Covenant Scriptures constitute the rule of faith and practice for the Christian. Both claim to be the truth, both claim to be complete. Nikolai Lenin, chief exponent of Marxism, declared, "The teaching of Marx is all powerful because it is true. It is complete and symmetrical, offering an integrated view of the world." The identical claim is made for Christianity. Both are catholic, or universal, in aim, having as their purpose the reshaping of the entire universe of mankind. Again, Lenin says, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to alter it."

     Communism is a religion. It is not merely a theory to which its proponents subscribe. It is a way of life, to which they are wholly committed. To Karl Marx, the historical process was God. It was the creator, the moulder, the controller of the race, shaping mankind for a destiny in a golden age on earth. The destruction of capitalism and the rise to power of the proletariat is viewed with the same drama of expectancy as the Christian views the second coming of Christ. Indeed, the Communist and the pre-millennialist, have in common the hope of a changed world on this earth. As the latter looks for an earthly reign of saints in a universe perfected by the abolition of sin through the binding of Satan, so the former looks for the reign of the proletariat through the relegation of Capitalism (the great seducer and exploiter of the race) to the bottomless pit of oblivion.

     As the Christian regards the revelation of God as being given gradually, and on an ascending scale, leading mankind upward to a more perfect state, so the Communist regards the experience of world philosophy as having done the same. The first believes in a God who works in history; the other believes in History working as a God. The first accepts the concept of a God who sees our needs and reveals himself in compassionate love; the second recognizes only blind force which shapes our destiny, thus has no need for either compassion or love. The achievement of its ends is by force. Once again, the power of the Spirit must meet the challenge of the spirit of Power!

     You are involved in this world struggle. Its outcome will affect every soul of earth's teeming millions. All that you hold dear hangs in the balance. The hopes and fears of all generations past, and of generations yet to come, linger in the shadows surrounding the battlefield, waiting with wonderment the final clash. The battle is not one, though, to be fought in the future--it is being fought now. The forces are grappling with each other, and a malevolent, treacherous and ruthless opponent moves closer to choke out the life you cherish. You are not a specta

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tor, you are a participant! If you declare that you are too ignorant, or too insignificant, to make a choice, you have already made one. You are giving comfort to the enemy. Once again, as never before, can it be said, "He that is not with me, is against me!" If you weaken the forces of righteousness by your indifference, apathy and unconcern, you are, to the same degree, strengthening the arm which wields a mailed fist to destroy what you cherish.

     In its ultimate, the titanic struggle will not be settled by guns, or planes, or satellites, or hydrogen bombs. These are mere manifestations of force. It is possible for scientific genius to continue to discover new applications of force upon an ascending scale. These discoveries may act as temporary deterrents, while the deadly race continues. An ever present danger is that man will cultivate force to the extent that he holds within his grasp the potential to destroy mankind. The accidental pulling of a central switch, or the activation of the mechanism by a desperate madman, could then hurl the material universe into an orgy of destruction. We can only pray that the orbiting of humanly created satellites will not so unbalance the sidereal realm as to cause a meteor to fall upon Washington or Moscow. Such an eventuality would hurl our world into a maelstrom of nightmarish agony.

     There is but one power which is superior to all weapons of force. It is moral power! If this erodes and decays while the other is on the ascendancy, we may arrive at the point where it is no longer effective as a controlling agent. This is the power with which Christianity has held in check the brute tendencies of mankind. But there is every evidence that it is on the wane. Sir Richard Livingston, in "The Future in Education," writes

     "If you allow the spiritual basis of a civilization to perish, you first change and finally destroy it Christianity and Hellenism are the spiritual bases of our civilization. They are far less powerful today than fifty years ago. Therefore, we are losing that spiritual basis, and our civilization is changing and on the way to destruction, unless we can reverse the process."

     Before we can reverse the process, we must first halt the forward progress on a decline. How can this be accomplished? I hold that it can only be done by sheer courage of those who are concerned. If a man saw an automobile without passengers, hurtling toward a precipice, and, powerless to do anything else to stop it, threw his body in its path to deflect its course, he would be branded as a fool. But, if his children, or grandchildren, were in it, and doomed to certain death without his interference, he would be designated a hero of the highest sort, if he risked or lost his life, by such an act. The fate of our loved ones lies in our ability to stop and reverse the social order which makes our civilization so decadent. Someone must rise in the spirit of true adventure, and daring to face the misunderstanding, ridicule and derision of a world become alien to the Christ whom it professes to serve, hurl himself squarely across the pathway, rallying others to the

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task. If, against such a wall of men and women, our degenerating and deteriorating culture is brought to a halt, we can then turn about, and start upward once again.

     But, we are asked if modern Christianity, as it is, cannot overcome the insidious foe. We are told of the increased number of communicants in the various religious bodies. It is pointed out that church attendance is at an all time high! The civilization of western man is based upon the belief that Jesus, born in Bethlehem of Judea, is the Son of God, and that the God of the universe has revealed himself to mankind as the Living Word, therefore, the life of this sinless one is the ideal for which we must strive in order to find happiness in this world and the one to come. Why is Christianity so powerless? It has been on earth for nineteen hundred years, yet there are millions of people made in the image of God, who have never even heard of Jesus of Nazareth, and millions who have heard and feel no spiritual impact from the hearing. How can we account for this?

     First, much of what is designated "Christianity" is not really Christian at all. It is paganism, parading under cover of Christian habiliment; human philosophy which has stolen the livery of heaven, hiding its origin by use of terminology made sacred through tradition. We live in an age when Jesus is honored with the lips, while hearts are far from him. We are victims of the crime of substitution. "While men have slept an enemy has crept in and sowed tares." These look like wheat, and the unwary are deceived thereby.

     We confuse attendance at places of worship with Christianity, and the test of a man's faith in the Christ is the regularity with which he shows up each week to sit as a spectator in the pew, and listen with stolid resignation to a clergyman air his views. Certainly, we are obligated by heaven to express our worship as a body with our fellow saints, but there are hundreds enrolled on the rosters of modern churches who never miss a meeting, yet never really worship God, nor do they have any life-transforming consciousness of Christianity. They subscribe to it as a good policy, or a satisfying way of life, but it is not life itself as it was to the primitive followers of the Nazarene. Increased attendance at the churches is not necessarily an indication of strength in the Christian realm.

     We confuse personal ministering to God and humanity, the very essence of real Christianity, with the ministering to us by someone hired for the task by the week or month. In direct opposition to the philosophy of Jesus, we "come not to minister, but to be ministered unto." So long have we integrated church buildings, cathedrals, rituals, and a professional clergy with Christianity, that we would not know how to worship without them, yet the infant church had none of these, and the church has lost its real impact on the world ever since it was tricked into adopting them as essential to the preservation of the Christian faith. We have even come to the point where we look upon giving money as "an act of worship" upon par with joint participation of the disciples at the table of the Lord. And many will carry their money to the church building to make "an offering in conformity with a legalistic code which threatens damnation to those who do not contribute to the maintenance of a pompous clergyman, who would not cross the street in front of their homes to furnish sustenance to a widow who belonged to "another faith." It is possible that the evil of substitution exists to the greatest degree among those who profess to be the

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exact reproduction of the original community of the saints.

     The Christian world faces its task, harassed and hampered by schism and division. It is an astounding fact that Communism has united divergent elements and welded into cohesive unity those peoples who represented different cultural backgrounds. Regardless of how far apart Gog and Magog may be, they can still gather together. But the followers of Jesus are split and fragmented even within the same nation. The bloodiest battles that have been fought were religious wars, waged between opposing camps of those who claimed allegiance to the cross of Christ. It is a conviction of the writer based upon his personal understanding and interpretation of the words of Jesus, that the only hope of world survival is the acceptance, by the world, of Jesus, as the Son of God and the Messiah. This can only be brought about by a unity of all who believe in Him. If all who believe in Jesus were one, the world would be won for Jesus. This is the promise of him who knows the hearts of men!

     The trend in Christianity, until recently, has been to divide and separate. Not a generation has passed since the close of the first century without leaving another cleavage in the ranks. The Christian world could not have become more divided, if it had been commanded to divide by the God of heaven. There are some signs that the tide is turning. Within the past decade some who have been separated have once more decided to unify their efforts. Religious bodies torn asunder by the question of human slavery have, in these more enlightened days, perceived the folly of maintaining division over an issue on which they now agree. Those who brought with them the prejudices engendered in native lands, have risen above those factors in this nation.

     We rejoice in all such indications and signs of maturity. True, these coalitions leave much to be desired, and do not represent a return to the ancient order of things, but they do represent a change in attitude which can be to us a source of gratitude. We are not unaware that many within our own fellowship scoff and sneer at such indications, and belittle all such attempts. Yet, it appears to the writer that it ill becomes those who profess to exist to bring about unity in the spiritual realm, to gnash their teeth in frustration when men unite, and give their blessing to those who spill the spiritual gore of others in fratricidal strife. Surely our hope of uniting believers in the Christ is not dependent upon our keeping them divided. Those who follow such a philosophy have borrowed a leaf from the journal of atheistic Communism.

     It is our purpose, God willing, to show the futility of a divided Christendom, in attempting to capture for the King of kings, those people who are alienated by geography and cultural backgrounds from western thought. We have acted as if Christianity were a white man's religion, and have sought to impose it as such upon other races, with all of its creedal differences, its subtle arguments, its western symbolism, and its varied disciplines. We have never considered how those things look to the philosophic minds of other races. And we have been so busy trying to plant an American Church in other countries, we have had no time to plant the seed of pure Christianity, untainted with the divergent interpretations of western thought. Most missionaries" are not so much troubled now by the coming of the Lord, as they are fearful of an inspection visit from a representative of the mission board, or the elders of a sponsoring church!

     In a subsequent article we shall study the case history of a mighty nation, whose origin is lost in the dim recesses of the past, but which survives until this day. Here the Christian religion had its greatest opportunity, and here suffered its most abject and tragic failure. Today, in that land, millions are enslaved by Communist overlords, while the representatives of the Christian concept have been driven across the borders. Why was it, with several centuries start, and with such favorable circumstances surrounding its introduction, that Christianity made such a poor showing in China? Shall we re-

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peat the same tragic error elsewhere? What is the answer? Does it lie with the Roman Catholic Church and its authoritarian system? Does it rest with the World Council of Churches? Or, does it rest with the heirs of the Restoration Movement of the nineteenth century? If, with these latter, with which group of heirs? With the Disciples of Christ? With the conservative group which opposes the United Christian Missionary Society? With "The Church of Christ"? If, with the latter, with which segment or faction? Where is the answer to be found? We think it must be found, or we shall perish. And we intend, God willing, to investigate and probe the situation, as relentlessly as the scientist in his laboratory, searches for the virus or microbe, which destroys human life. We are not unaware of the price we shall pay for this seeking after truth! We are fully aware of what the cost will be. But we will not shrink from the consequences. We are committed to this study, and this search for truth, and truth never comes cheaply.

     Christianity is the only force which can meet Communism at the last disputed barricade and stem the flow of this onrushing horde. We must make Christianity work or our children's children will be slaves. It is just that simple. It is just that serious. In subsequent issues we shall deal, humbly but sincerely and directly, with the problems of this age, contending for the right "as God gives us to see the right." If you deem there is anything meritorius in these feeble efforts and studies, we solicit your aid to make them available to "the concerned ones" in every denomination. Have you really done anything as yet to measure up to your personal responsibility in this crucial hour? Will you not start today in a small way, by sharing this very article with a neighbor or friend? If you are a Sunday School teacher, will you recommend it to your class? If you are a leader of a civic club--Lions, Rotary, or Kiwanis--will you use some of the material in a speech to your fellow members? Would you mail copies to friends who are affiliated with various religious bodies. Surely the danger we face transcends all partisan lines!

     We invite you to read our article next month under the title "Pattern for Disaster." You may read this paper a full year for only one dollar, or you may receive 25 copies each month for a year, mailed to your address, for only ten dollars. Do you really care? Are you honestly concerned?