Heralds of Hope

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     Truth fairly presented, and enforced by the good example of its advocates, has ever triumphed, and will continue to triumph until the victory is complete.--Alexander Campbell in Christian Baptist, page 225.

     At first the flame was very small as if someone had suddenly struck a single match in the velvet darkness of the whole universe. Then it was applied to the ripened field of humanity and it flickered and flared and burst into light. The wind began to blow with increasing velocity and the flame licked out its fiery tongues in all directions. The flame was the Message. The wind was persecution. And the darkness was the terrifying ignorance of a world which knew Him not!

     The torch was lighted from above. The flame came down as it did when it consumed the sacrifices of Abraham and Elijah. No man could light the torch, for the fire is the fire of God. Men could hold the torch and run with it for it was their duty to work the work of God on earth, but they could not kindle the flame. They could not extinguish it either. And that is why it has never gone out.

     The first person who really held it up for his people to see was a fisherman. He was not alone upon the occasion. There were eleven others with him and they had just undergone a tremendous experience. A tornadic wind had rushed earthward and enveloped the room where they were sitting. Glowing tongues like flame appeared above the head of each one. Suddenly they found themselves able to converse in languages utterly foreign to them. An excited multitude formed. Eyes were focused on the fisherman.

     He was ill-equipped for the role which fell to his lot. By nature impetuous, by occupation inured to hard work, he was ignorant by worldly standards. But he spoke with fluency and with no lack of words, for he was but the mouthpiece of divine power. And the multitude listened and were moved. The flame kindled their hearts.

     Then a tentmaker who was also a rabbinical student, became filled with hatred for the fire. Frantically he sought to beat it out with hands whose fingers were blackened and pricked from the needles of his craft. But the light smote him and the intensity of it blinded him. When he was made to see again he picked up the torch which he had sought to destroy and carried it at the peril of his very life.

     So it came to pass that the flame leaped over the straits to islands of the sea as a forest fire jumps from one pine-clad crag to another. It swept over mountains and down through the rocky defile called "The Tarsian Gate" and flowed over the miasmatic plains of Asia Minor. From ancient Troy of fabled fame it crossed to Philippi "the deathbed of the Roman Republic," and rippled along the Egnatian Way to sensual Corinth and intellectual Athens. And at last it came to the heart

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of the Empire, to Rome itself, borne by a captive into the dank Mamertine Prison, and it penetrated the walls of the palace and burned in the hearts of some of Caesar's very household.

     The bearing of the flame is a saga of the courage of simple men and women, elevated to heights of daring by an unquenchable trust which caused them to "love not their lives unto death." Many of them were nameless slaves, their bodies the chattels of earthly masters. They were human ciphers until the Message came and established identity for them in a voluntary surrender which made them free. And this freedom took away the fear of death with its ultimate casting of their bodies on the dunghills and garbage-dumps where tireless worms worked ceaselessly in the aroma of decay. The Message was a message of Beyond!

     In this presentation we hope to tell you of the growth and spread of the community of grace-sharers, the grace that came with truth by Jesus of Nazareth. We want to establish that it was not the work of brilliant intellectuals, or trained professionals, or smooth operators. It was not the triumph of organizational planning and direction. It made no use of great combines or crusades. It was unregimented, inept and amateurish--and it succeeded! It was the only war in history won by men who took no lives but freely gave their own.

     Consider their calling, their summons to vocation. There were not many earthly philosophers among them. There were not many men of political prominence to wield power. There were not many of noble birth. It was the foolish things, the weak things, the base things, the despised things, which were chosen. Even the things which were not were selected. And they reduced to nothing the things that were. It was as if a stone which had no reality, no weight and no solidity, fell upon the proud structure of the world's glory and pulverized it. No one could explain it. It defied all scientific data, all human experience. It was the Lord's doing and it is still marvelous in our eyes until this day!

     Such a man, for example, was Celsus, the first of the intellectuals and philosophers to bitterly assail the Way. In the second century he composed a book of ridicule and invective against Christianity, under the title Alethes Logos. He did not realize that his volume would some day become a direct proof of that which he sought to destroy, and be all the more valuable because it was penned by a foe rather than a friend. One of his accusations was that "woolworkers, leather-dressers, the most illiterate and vulgar of mankind are zealous preachers of the gospel."

     Canon Farrar in his volume titled The Early Days of Christianity writes, "The Christians had filled no large space in the eye of the world. Until the days of Domitian we do not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had joined their ranks." Celsus declared that the Christians consisted only of "the uninstructed, the servile and the ignorant."

     In spite of their handicap the humble saints kindled the fire of God all over the known world. They were not trained professionals. A. H. Newman in A Manual of Church History writes, "After the time of the apostle Paul most of the spread of the gospel was effected, not by direct missionary efforts, but by the moving hither and thither throughout the empire of artisans and tradesmen, who planted Christianity wherever they went. So also Christianity was frequently spread by persecution, each fugitive forming a new center of Christian influence." (Page 142).

     Professor Fisher in The Beginning of Christianity says, "It is an interesting,

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but not a surprising fact, that the circumstances of the first planting of Christianity in places which were later its most powerful seats, including Rome and Carthage, are not known. Visitors to Jerusalem at the great festivals, mechanics who changed their abode from place to place, and commercial travelers, might carry to their homes the faith which they had elsewhere received, and form the nucleus of new Christian communities. The gospel was transported from place to place, as seeds are blown from the trees and wafted abroad."

     L. de Pressense in The Early Years of Christianity writes, "We observe, first that the work was not done through any fixed organization. We shall not find in the church of the second and third centuries, any of those great missionary associations which form so important a part of modern Christian agency, for the simple reason that the whole church was then essentially a missionary society. A stranger and a sojourner rather than a settler in the world, hard pressed on all sides by surrounding paganism, its very life was one long conflict. It must fight in self-defence, and conquer or die. There was no distinction then between home and foreign missions; the Christian had but to cross his own threshold, and walk the public streets of his own city, and he found a pagan people at his own door to be converted."

     Again he says, "Every church was a mission-center, radiating gospel light far and near...A new mission generally arose out of some incidental circumstance, and wherever a Christian set his foot, however barren the soil, there he planted the cross, and gathered around him the nucleus of a church."

     Celsus complained, "Many of the Christians without any special calling, watch for all opportunities, and both within and without the temples, boldly proclaim their faith; they find their way into the cities, and the armies, and there having called the people together, harangue them with fanatical gestures."

     That such fervency of spirit was successful is evidenced from the writings which have been preserved for us. In the second century Justin Martyr declared, "There exists not a single race of man, barbarians, Greeks, or by whatever name they may be called, warlike or nomadic, whether they live in tents or wander in wagons, among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of Jesus the crucified, to the Father and Creator of all things."

     Ireneus wrote, "Many tribes of the barbarians, without paper and ink, have the words of salvation written in their hearts through the Holy Spirit." This referred to the fact that the Good News was taken to men before the sacred scriptures were translated into their languages, and they accepted the message.

     In a passage which has become famous, Tertullian wrote to the Roman emperor, "We Christians are but of yesterday and we have filled your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your towns, your market places, the very camp, palace, senate, forum, and have left you nothing but the temples of your gods...If we were to make a general secession, and betake ourselves to some remote corner of the world, you would be horror-struck at the solitude."

     1. The transformed life. The Christians were saints, and the word "saint" to them simply meant "one who is different." They no longer conformed to the world.

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They regarded themselves as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and as such they avoided those lusts which war against the soul. Filled with the same desires as others in the flesh they still lived a disciplined and ordered life.

     In a world of luxury, affluence and profligacy, they moved with quiet dignity, their eyes fixed on a far-off goal. In all of my reading I have never come across more poignant language than that used by Canon Farrar in his description of the world into which Christianity was introduced. Although space will not permit of lengthy excerpts, please bear with me as I draw the following from The Early Days of Christianity.

     "The epoch which witnessed the early growth of Christianity was an epoch of which the horror and degradation have rarely been equalled, and perhaps never exceeded, in the annals of mankind...Even if St. Paul had never paused amid his sacred reasonings to affix his terrible brand upon the pride of Heathenism, there would still have been abundant proofs of the abnormal wickedness which accompanied the decadence of ancient civilization. They are stamped upon its coinage, cut on its gems, painted upon its chamber-walls, sown broadcast over the pages of its poets, satirists, and historians."
     "I need but make a passing allusion to its enormous wealth; its unbounded self-indulgence; its coarse and tasteless luxury; its greedy avarice; its sense of insecurity and terror; its apathy, debauchery and cruelty; its hopeless fatalism; its unspeakable sadness and weariness; its strange extravagance alike of infidelity and superstition."
     "At the summit of the whole decaying system-- necessary, yet destested--elevated indefinitely above the very highest, yet living in dread of the very lowest, oppressing a population which he terrified, and terrified by the population which he oppressed--was an Emperor, raised to the divinest pinnacle of autocracy, yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread; an Emperor, who, in the terrible phrase of Gibbon, was at once a priest, an atheist, and a god."

     In such a world, and in such a time, the Christians refused to tarnish their lives by participation in the sports and amusements, the crimes and indecencies of those about them. Athenagoras was an outstanding Athenian Philosopher who began reading the scriptures in order to refute them. He was converted by his own study and in 177 A.D., addressed his Plea for the Christians to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. Here are some of his statements.

     "Amongst us you will find uneducated persons and artisans and old women, who if they are unable by words to prove our doctrine, yet exhibit by their deeds the good arising from their conviction of the truth. They do not make speeches, but they practice good works; when smitten they do not strike again; when robbed they do not go to law; they give to those who ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves."

     Origen also wrote, "Those who are despised as ignorant fools and no better than slaves, no sooner commit themselves to God's direction, by accepting the teaching of Jesus, than, forsaking their sins, many of them, like perfect priests for whom such pleasures have no charm, keep themselves pure in act and thought."

     2. Lack of prejudice. The fact that God loved the world and that Jesus died for all men, gave every reconciled being equal status among the believers. No longer did artificial criteria such as wealth, intellectual attainment, national prominence, or social position have any significance. The cross served to produce

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a world of a single category. All were in equal need of a savior and beside this fact all else paled into insignificance.

     The love feast became a visible demonstration of that inner power which transcended every other consideration. Men loved one another because God loved them all. Thus Minucius Felix has Octavius say, "The reason we love one another is because we do not know how to hate. We call one another brethren, as being born of the same God and parent, and as companions in faith and fellow-heirs of the same hope. As for crosses, we neither worship nor wish for them."

     B. H. Cooper in his book The Free Church says of the end of the apostolic age, "The bright prospect which opened upon the day of Pentecost, the rallying of redeemed mankind around the Son of man, and of their awakening to a common consciousness of their brotherly relationship to each other in Him, was realized in the bosom of the two or three hundred apostolic churches (which had then been gathered), in some cases four thousand miles apart, and built up of men of every variety of rank, culture, color, clime, language, and previous religious training, as it has never been since." We pause to remark that those who seek to recapture the apostolic power and purpose should ponder carefully this statement.

     3. The raw courage of faith. In his Church History, Milner says of the lack of documents in the sub-apostolic age, that the principal work of the Christians was "to believe, to suffer, to love, and not to write." If this is correct there is ample evidence they walked worthy of their vocation.

     A good example is Justin Martyr who, after examination of all the philosophic schools of the day, became a follower of Jesus. Together with six of his companions, one of them a sister in Christ, he was arrested and brought before Rusticus, the city prefect, who had been appointed to office because he had formerly been the instructor of the emperor in the Stoic philosophy.

     The account of the trial is interesting. When Rusticus asked, "What kind of doctrines do you profess?" the reply was given, "I have endeavored to learn all doctrines; but I have settled at last in the true doctrine, that of the Christians."

     The prefect asked, "Are those the doctrines that please thee, miserable man? Where do you Christians assemble?" Justin said, "Where everyone chooses and is able. Dost thou suppose we all meet in the same place? Not so. The God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place; being invisible He fills heaven and earth, and is everywhere worshiped and glorified by the faithful."

     The entire party acknowledged boldly that they were Christians. The prefect threatened them all with death, and turning to Justin asked him if he supposed that if he was beheaded he would go to heaven and receive a reward. The reply was, "I do not suppose it, I know and am fully persuaded of it."

     When the Christians refused to burn incense to the gods, Rusticus pronounced the sentence of death. "Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods, and to obey the command of the Emperor, be scourged and led away to suffer the punishment of decapitation, pursuant to the laws." At the place of execution the faithful little band died with a hymn of praise upon their lips.

     When the community of saints at Carthage was threatened with persecution of the worst kind, Cyprian addressed to the believers his Exhortation to Martyrdom, to persuade them to don joyfully the purple robe, dyed in the blood of the Lamb. Here is his conclusion.

     "In such meditations the spirit grows strong, and becomes proof against the terrors of the evil one and the menaces of the world. Earth is shut up against us in times of persecution, but heaven is opened; Antichrist threatens, but Christ sustains; death overtakes us, but immortality follows: the world recedes, but paradise receives us; this life of a day is quenched, eternal life begins. What honor, what peace, what joy, to depart thus gloriously from the midst of persecu-

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tion and anguish, to shut the eyes on the world of men, to open them on the face of God and of His Christ: O short and blessed voyage."

     4. The message of hope. Canon Farrar says of the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, "Gluttony, caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break the monotony of its weariness, or alleviate the anguish of its despair."

     The historian continues, "And what was the religion of a period which needed the sanctions and consolations of religion more deeply than any age since the world began? It is certain that the old Paganism was--except in country places-- practically dead. The very fact that it was necessary to prop it up by the buttress of political interference shows how hollow and ruinous the structure of classic Polytheism had become...The upper classes were destitute of faith, yet terrified at skepticism. They had long learnt to treat the current mythology as a mass of worthless fables, scarcely amusing enough even for a schoolboy's laughter, but they were the ready dupes of every wandering quack who chose to assume the character of a mathematicus or a mage."

     In such an atmosphere Stoicism became the religion of the literary ranks. The historian says, "It made a vice of compassion, which Christianity inculcated as a virtue; it cherished a haughtiness which Christianity discouraged as a sin. It was unfit for the task of ameliorating mankind because it looked on human nature in its normal aspects with contemptuous disgust. Its marked characteristic was a despairing sadness, which became specially prominent in its most sincere adherents. Its favorite theme was the glorification of suicide, which wise moralists severely reprobated, but which many Stoics belauded as the one sure refuge against oppression and outrage."

     The writer concludes his chapter with these words, "St. Paul and St. Peter, on the other hand, were at the very same epoch teaching in the same city, to a few Jewish hucksters and a few Gentile slaves, a doctrine so full of brightness, that letters, written in a prison with torture and death in view, read like idylls of serene happiness and paeans of triumphant joy. The graves of these poor sufferers, hid from the public eye in the catacombs, were decorated with an art, rude indeed, yet so triumphant as to make their subterranean squalor radiant with emblems of all that is brightest and most poetic in the happiness of man. While the glimmering taper of the Stoics was burning pale, as though amid the vapors of a charnel-house, the torch of life upheld by the hands of the Tarsian tentmaker and the Galilean fisherman had flashed from Damascus to Antioch, from Antioch to Athens, from Athens to Corinth, from Corinth to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Rome."

     The Message is needed today. Men are hungering and thirsting for righteousness and that is what it has to offer. It is not outgrown or outmoded. It is adapted to meet the needs of men like they are and where they are. But it is obvious that there must be renewal in our time if we are to become effective. We propose to discuss with you what we believe are vital factors which can lead to that renewal.

     1. We must recapture the concept that every Christian is a minister of God, and we must provide training for every-member ministry. We must cease to designate one man as "the minister" or "our minister" for this very language places the remainder of the saints in a non-ministering category. Elton Trueblood deserves the commendation of all of us for

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pointing out in his book The Incendiary Fellowship that "If Dr. Jones is the minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Centerville, it follows logically that the ordinary members are not ministers."

     The strength of the primitive community of believers lay in the fact that they had not been betrayed into thinking of themselves as spectators of a performance. They did not even think of themselves as performers on a world stage. They were not play-acting. The world was a battlefield and they were combat troops. In the rather slang but expressive language of the city streets "this was for real, man!"

     We must also recognize that whatever is done by a child of God in an attitude of humility and reverence, constitutes ministry, for ministry simply means service. The "service" is not something held in an ecclesiastical structure, but something that is done outside. The Christian does not attend a service, he renders it! The service does not begin at ten o'clock on Sunday morning. It does not cease and for that reason cannot start. It is as important on Monday morning as on Sunday morning. Actually, what we do on Monday may be more important than what we do on Sunday, and this does not at all argue that what is done on Sunday is not important!

     All of the saints must become so involved that they do not have time to gather every night for two weeks to listen to someone tell them over and over what they have already heard and done. Why repeat interminably the terms of enlistment to men in battle fatigues? They have already enlisted and should be out fighting! We have a world to conquer and we will not get the job done by sitting around in the mess-hall listening to an imported sergeant describe the terms of enlistment. It is silly to talk about "holding a revival" for a company of troops unless they are dead. It is interesting to note that the Jehovah's Witnesses do not hold revivals!

     We must turn our meetinghouses into arsenals and training centers. We must make our preachers into coaches and trainers. Their task should be to discover and develop the aptitudes of all who volunteer under the banner of Christ. Not all are adapted to the same task but all should be given some task. There are no non-functioning members in the body of Christ, but the divine instruction is, "having gifts that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them" (Romans 12:6).

     This entails several things. One must determine the nature of the gift he has, and must be willing and eager to use it. The community of saints must seek for meaningful ways in which to encourage use of all the gifts. The present system discourages use of gifts. It relegates the mass of the membership to a place where they can only "pay and pray." Sometimes the last is done for them, although the first never is.

     The apostle urged those with the gift of prophecy to exercise it in proportion to faith. He continues, "If service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness."

     We will need to revise our strategy. The world will simply not be won by an elite group of trained professionals, call them priests, ministers, theologians, or whatever. The idea of creating a congregation for a minister, and then creating a minister for the congregation, or vice versa, is just not a part of God's program and plan for world conquest. This idea did not originate with the Bible.

     An army that spends its time being served or ministered to is helpless and hopeless as a fighting force. We talk nonsense when we equate strength with numbers. We have been deceived by the fallacy of strength in statistics! Innate strength is the ability to accomplish the work or purpose for which a thing is created without additional force or help from the outside or from another source. A group of twenty Christians who are capable of edifying themselves is strong, while four hundred who have to be edified to survive are weak. A man who

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weighs four hundred pounds but has to be helped to his feet and supported while he walks is not nearly as strong as one who weighs a hundred and fifty pounds and can go out and chop wood all day!

     If the primitive saints had adopted our ideas and constituted themselves into "a church" Christianity would have expired in its cradle. And we will never recapture our potential until we cease to be "a church" with its structures, forms, programs, organizations and vested interests, and become a living organism--the body of Christ. Emil Brunner is right when he says, "The community which waits in hope for the return of the Lord and which lives by faith and love in the possession of His Spirit, cannot be an institution, a church."

     Brunner is also correct when he says, "The New Testament Ecclesia, the fellowship of Jesus Christ, is a pure communion of persons and has nothing of the character of an institution about it: it is therefore misleading to identify any single one of the historically developed churches, which are all marked by an institutional character, with the true Christian communion."

     The body of Christ, through its members, brought the pagan world to its knees in humble suppliance to the Lord. But when, in order to secure and hold their gains, they constituted themselves into a "church," a historical institution, paganism moved in and rendered the institution helpless for effective combat. The difference between a church and the body of Christ is simply stated. A church arranges and uses its adherents, manipulating them as it chooses. Men are made for the "church." "But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose" (1 Corinthians 12:18).

     2. We must recapture the concept of the transformed life. We no longer feel at ease when we are called saints. We do not like to think of ourselves as sanctified. We shrink from being regarded as holy. But the early Christians were "different" and they knew they were. This was the very thing which lent them power.

     Now if we are absolutely honest (and this is difficult to be) we will admit that we have "watered down" our lives a great deal. Keith Miller in The Taste of New Wine points out that the modern institutional church is filled with people who look pure and sound pure but are sick of themselves and that of which they are a part.

     One reason that we do not get more people out of the world and into the "church" is that so many who are already in it would like to get out. Remove the fear of hell which the institutional church uses as a weapon trained on the gate, and there would be a general exodus in a lot of places. All one needs to do to find out how unhappy most people are with their associates in the church is to listen to them talk about them for a half hour. We need to change one of our old hymn titles to: "What? A fellowship?" Small wonder that most of the heathen decide to stay out of something which turns so many of its adherents into frustrated grumblers and spiritual schizophrenics.

     Yet the reason why the condition exists is very apparent. We have been converting men to an institution rather than to a savior. And sinful man needs a savior! Putting men into an institution who really need a physician will not cure them. It may make them worse! I realize that this will be resented and vociferously denied, but I still affirm that it is so.

     To be quite plain we use Christ as another gimmick, an attention-getter, a sales pitch. But in the final analysis, the thing that really counts with us is how many names are listed on our institutional tally sheet, the membership roster. The fact is that when we hold a "crusade" against the modern Turks, if someone really comes to Christ but does not come with us, we think of him as being lost, not saved. And we bemoan the fact that after we got him to land he slipped out of our net.

     We contrast the number in our "church" with that in other churches, and we revel in the news reports that we are the "fastest growing church" in America. We clip out such items and carry them in our

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billfold to show to our unfortunate associates who belong to slower "churches"; we reproduce our favorable figures in bulletins and tack the reports on our bulletin boards!

     But there is nothing about affiliating with an institution that automatically revolutionizes one's life. There is a difference between being transferred to a new status by a creed, and transformed into a new state by the Christ. It could be a serious question how much Satan worries about those we capture. He probably does not care how many we get into the "church" provided they act like many of those who are already there. He doesn't really lose them, he just puts them into a clump at our expense, where he can readily find them.

     It will be argued that what we say is true of sects, or denominations, or cults, but is not true of "the Lord's church." But the term "the Lord's church" is a clever semantic switch in our day which is employed to designate a special historic movement which is institutionalized with all of its supporting and contributing agencies, organizations, business enterprises and vested interests.

     "The Lord's church" is a synonym in the minds of those who use the term for "The Church of Christ," and this is the outgrowth of a historical restoration movement. All of our pious platitudes will not alter this fact. And as Brunner says it is "marked by an institutional character." What I have said is true of any institution calling itself "a church" or "the church." No institutional relationship can mechanically change one's life. It can serve as a cover or shield, and often does!

     The primitive saints enrolled and entered into a vital, absorbing, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The language employed to describe this state is revelatory of its nature. Those who entered were born again, they constituted a new creation, a new humanity. Their life was hid with Christ in God. To live was Christ. It was a thrilling vocabulary, pulsating and throbbing with the dynamic of a new existence. They had come to know The Joy, and they were blessed in the knowing! They had been touched by the hand of God, their hearts had been sprinkled with blood, their bodies washed with pure water. And they were not the same as before. They would never be the same again. Old things (including the old sameness, the old drabness) had passed away. All things had become new. It was this which gave them such a sense of destiny, of urgency, of inexhaustible power.

     Although every indication is that the temptation to conform seems almost overwhelming, we must not overlook the power of the Spirit and the word of God. We have relied upon our own plans and projects, our schemes and systems, but these can never produce a new creation. They can rearrange and readjust, but they have no power to redeem or regenerate. An incubator cannot produce chickens, although ours has been entrusted with that task. Life comes from life! We must throw ourselves upon the Lord and cease to trust in "the horses and chariots of Egypt." We must preach Christ, and live Christ. We must be content to lead men to Him and let God place them in the body as it pleases Him.

     3. We must crucify our prejudice. The entertainment of racial prejudice is a denial of God's revelation and purpose. Regardless of how we seek to rationalize or justify it we will never gloss over the fact that it is unjust, uncharitable and unchristian. It is not enough that we merely tolerate our brethren of other ethnic backgrounds, but we must receive them and welcome them as God has welcomed us for the sake of Jesus Christ.

     God has no stepchildren and we can have no half-brothers in the Lord. There are no second-class citizens in the kingdom made possible and created by "the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior." We must face up to the issue of our own prejudice very honestly for no other question in our day is quite so likely to make hypocrites of us.

     This is evident in religiously oriented institutions such as some schools which resisted integration and held the white

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line until public and political pressure from without forced them to integrate, and which then began to publicize themselves as champions of racial freedom. It is manifest in those organizations which allowed token integration and pointed to the few blacks among them as a sign of charitable fellowship. Such a flagrant attempt to use men to project a false image is quackery and pretension of the worst kind.

     Our prejudice against those of another color or race must be washed away by the blood of the Lamb, for that one blood is the same blood from which God made all nations of men. It is not enough to conceal our true feelings, or to go along because it "is the thing to do." We must mortify or put to death our littleness, intolerance and bigotry.

     We will never be able to really further the kingdom in our day until we see our partiality as sin and recognize that so long as we make such distinctions among ourselves we become "judges with evil thoughts." So long as we merely hide our human nature, and cloak it with empty profession and outward appearance we are deceivers. We must overcome this grave sin on our knees and in true penitent confession.

     The world is shrinking. The man on the other side of the globe is now closer than the next village was a century ago. We simply cannot afford the luxury of racial hatred or animosity. Hungarians are no longer "Bohunks," Italians are no longer "Wops," Jews are no longer "Kikes," French are no longer "Frogs," Negroes are no longer "Niggers." The one who still indulges in this kind of national and racial appellation only reveals his ignorance and provincialism. He dates himself by his uncultured and untutored language. If he thinks in these terms but does not utter them he shows that he only has a thin veneer of silence to cover up a heart seething with bias.

     That the Christian world is outgrowing its parochial attitude of the past in the matter of racial differences is apparent from many angles. One that deserves special mention relates to a resolution adopted by the World Congress on Evangelism which met in Berlin in the autumn of 1966. The proclamation was entitled, "One Race, One Gospel, One Task." Of special significance is the following excerpt.

     "All who are 'in Christ' henceforth can recognize no distinctions based on race or color and no limitations arising out of human pride or prejudice, whether in the fellowship of those who have come to faith in Christ or in the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ to men everywhere. We reject the notion that men are unequal because of distinction of race or color. In the name of Scripture and of Jesus Christ we condemn racialism wherever it appears. We ask forgiveness for our past sins in refusing to recognize the clear command of God to love our fellowmen with a love that transcends every human barrier or prejudice."

     A genuine implementation of this resolution by the concerned ones who drew it up will make a tremendous impact upon our world. These evangelicals came from 100 nations and represented 70 religious groups. They assembled in "a spectacular display of evangelical unity on the basis of biblical theology and evangelism," as Carl F. H. Henry phrased it. No one of us ought to hesitate to subscribe to this clear statement on the subject of race. All of us ought to engrave it upon the shield of our hearts.

     4. We must recapture the raw courage of faith. In our day, at least in the United States of America, men are no longer put to death by torture for faith in God. Our problem is not one of being faithful unto death, but of remaining faithful until death. However, persecution has not ceased in our neo-pagan world, although it has changed its form. It is now generally psychical rather than physical. Sarcasm has been substituted for the stake, and ridicule has replaced the rack. Men are pilloried now by satirists rather than by soldiers.

     Because the means employed are not so bloody or blatant there is a danger that we may be deceived into thinking that a less intense faith will suffice. This is not

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so. It may be much easier to steel oneself to endure physical agony for a season until welcome death brings respite than to face the daily shafts which wound but do not kill. It is probably easier to die for the faith than to live for it.

     Let us mention a few situations where bulldog tenacity is needed to hold on to integrity. Take the case of a soldier who is thrown into company with those whose moral standards, or lack of them, allow them to drink, gamble and frequent houses of prostitution. An atmosphere of profanity and rank obscenity prevails and one who does not indulge in vice is made the subject of constant taunt and the butt of ridicule. To maintain one's faith in God, to read the Bible and to pray regularly, is not easy. One whose spiritual valor does not weaken deserves to be decorated with the badge of superior courage. That many do come through such an ordeal unscathed and unscarred is a testimony to the power of God in the committed life.

     Or, consider the student on a large university campus where many of those with whom he is thrown into daily contact are experimenting with hallucinogenic or "mind-expanding" drugs, and who brand as "straights" or "squares" all who resist "the madding crowd's ignoble strife" and "keep the even tenor of their way." Such a student can hardly escape being thrown into circumstances where sex is exploited and where resistance to its enticement and blandishment causes one to be regarded as a "kook" or "religious nut." In our own on-campus dialogues and encounters we have met a lot of young men and women who refuse to "sell their faith down the river."

     I must confess that I have often found in college students that quality of courageous faith demonstrated by another brilliant scholastic, Moses, who absorbed all of the wisdom available in the most profligate culture of his day, and through the sheer genius of his leadership became a national hero (Acts 7:22). But when "the chips were down" by an act of irrevocable faith he turned his back on wealth and political honor, "choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin." I know young people in high school and college who have actually spent sleepless nights praying and wrestling with their inner selves, buffeting their bodies to bring them into subjection. And I know a lot of them who have won the battle!

     I have come to admire a great deal the company of committed ones who have penetrated the secular campus to bring a Christian influence to bear upon the teaching of varied disciplines. I am not especially concerned with the agitation to place the Bible as a textbook in such a college, or with teaching Christianity as one of the "world religions." Nor have I become especially exercised over the Supreme Court decision to proscribe prepared and prescribed prayers in the classroom. What I am concerned about is that we have Christian teachers in every department, and praying men and women instructing in all areas.

     Aesop had a moral which read, "It is easy to be brave from a safe distance." La Rouchefoucauld wrote, "No man can answer for his courage who has never been in danger." Most of us will never know the pressures brought upon the man or woman who pursues the study of philosophy, psychology, or the healing arts, to the highest degree. That many of these maintain a humble faith in God is a tribute to the same spirit which prompted Sir Walter Raleigh to say on the scaffold, "If the heart be right, it matters not which way the head lies." My own faith has been immeasurably strengthened by physicians, engineers and university instructors who keep theirs.

     In our world of regimentation and conformity we are liable to be betrayed into glorifying one who abandons the prosaic and humdrum to go to a remote area as a missionary. Certainly such a person deserves credit and respect, but this may actually require less courage than to be God's missionary where one works in a large department store, a huge factory, or an automobile assembly plant. The man who instructs simple savages in the letters

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of the alphabet may not face nearly as many problems as one who must meet a civilized "savage" public in the asphalt jungle of a great metropolitan center.

     One of the best "missionaries" I know runs a Shell service station. Another has a bread delivery route in a suburban area. Still another works for our state in a home economics program. Another is an engineer in a large aerodynamics plant. They have affected my life in a very substantial manner, but they have done no more for me than a cotton farmer whom I know in the southland who never finished the fourth grade in school. Probably he has helped me as much as any person I have ever met.

     J. T. Clarke wrote, "This is the way to cultivate courage: first, by standing firm on some conscientious principle, some law of duty. Next, by being faithful to truth and right on small occasions and common events. Third, by trusting God for help and power." Cicero summed it up for us when he wrote, "A man of courage is also full of faith."

     5. We must recapture the impact of the message of hope. We live in an age that is filled to satiety with things. Men are drunken and nauseated by the power of money. The world is growing cold, callous and cruel. Sub-cultures of rebellion have formed in protest against the well-groomed look, the scented bath, and the cosmetic complexion. The "man in the grey flannel suit," the Wall Street promoter, the slick operator, has given way to the Beatles as the projected idols of the younger set.

     And the disillusionment with the sham and hypocrisy which has developed from pretending to worship God openly, while keeping a shrine to Mammon in the inner heart, has created a revulsion to the emptiness and vacuity which characterizes life today. It is not a mere circumstance that suicide will claim more lives on the university campus this year than any other means of physical extinction.

     This presents to the Way the greatest opportunity it has had since the days of the Caesars. We are fast approaching the very kind of world into which Christianity was launched. We stand at the portals of another "fulness of the times." The tired, jaded, saddened men and women all about us are no different than those who made up the Roman Empire. And we now have every facility to enable us to encircle the globe with the Message.

     We have no time left, however, to experiment with incidental or peripheral topics or themes. Humanity in crisis is not interested in our little arguments indulged among ourselves in our little partisan playhouses. The man on the operating table suffering from a gangrenous infection will become impatient with those surgeons who debate the various opinions as to techniques.

     We must discover again the very core of the Message, that which is vital, innate and intrinsic. And somehow we must find the way for all who trust in that essence to unite in its proclamation. If the time ever arrives that our world ceases to seethe in ferment and again settles down upon its lees we may find time for Christians to argue and dispute over accessory matters, circumstantials and extraneous situations. But we dare not take time out now to argue the merits of our approaches in the face of impending disaster.

     To me our course is plain. We must inject hope, transcendent hope, into the quaking, trembling body of a universe frightened by its own shadow. That means a recovery of the message of the resurrection. Nothing else will do. I have personally tried this out with campus groups in Student Union buildings, in fraternity houses, and in sorority lounges. I have a firm and positive faith in the resurrection. When I speak of it I do so without equivocation. The motto of the apostle is my own guideline, "We also believe and therefore speak!" And I have been astounded at what has happened.

     It is upon the fact of the resurrection that all else hinges. "Now if the rising of Christ from the dead is the very heart of our message, how can some of you deny that there is any resurrection?" (1 Corinthians 15:12). No person can honestly and intelligently confront the fact of the resurrection and not be changed. "And if

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Christ was not raised then neither our preaching nor your faith has any meaning at all." Again, "If Christ did not rise your faith is futile and your sins have never been forgiven."

     The resurrection must not be proclaimed as "a doctrine of the church." There is nothing more void or empty to modern man than "a doctrine of the church." He is fed up with the controversies, quarrels and wranglings occasioned by such matters. The resurrection of Jesus is a fact of history, not a theological deduction. It is not a timeless something, but it is like any other historical fact, it was timed!

     As a historical fact it relates to man caught up in the historical predicament. There is no such thing as an unrelated historical fact. And man can no more escape or evade the implications of the resurrection for his life than he can escape the implications of the industrial revolution, the discovery of the Salk vaccine, or the launching of space capsules.

     We must let men in on God's greatest secret. We must show them the transcendent mystery. Being "in the know" on this is the only thing which can transform earthly beings composed outwardly of clay. Man was not made to continue elemental. "This perishable nature of ours must be wrapped in imperishability; these bodies which are mortal must be wrapped in immortality." The sequel to this is the most startling revelation to a dying race. "So when this perishable is lost in the imperishable, the mortal lost in the immortal, this saying will come true, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'"

     This is the very heart of our Message. We have neglected it at our own peril. We close with the words of Abraham Lincoln, "Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day. No, no, man was made for immortality."

     (Editor's Note. This is the third in a series of articles to run throughout this year, God willing, on the theme "God's Community." Next month the heading of the presentation will be "Conflict With Caesar." You will enjoy it.)