by Steve | Apr 3, 1968 | Archive - 1968
Archive: Blessed Assurance
April 1968
By Buford M. McElroy, Sr.
Pastor, First Methodist Church, Camp Hill, Alabama
The late Bishop Bachman G. Hodge, of the North Alabama Conference, had a favorite story he loved to tell about one of his friends, who was an Episcopal minister. This friend was always kidding the bishop about the Methodists leaving the Episcopal Church. He would always end up by saying, “Bishop, when you Methodists left, you took the stove with you.”
Methodism always has been referred to as the religion of the warmed heart. I like the description. I wish it were always and everywhere true. But we Methodists have no exclusive right to this title. We’re not the only Christians who know in our lives the power of the grace of God. But The Methodist Church was the only church which took care to build into its very structure, the means of making sure that people should not continue long in membership without this knowledge.
The Episcopal bishop was referring particularly to the heartwarming experience which came to John Wesley. He wrote in his diary, under the date of May 24th, 1738, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had saved me, even me, from the law of sin and death.” Ever since, Methodists have cherished the memory of that experience of trustful fellowship with Christ by faith alone and its resulting assurance of full salvation. And we have stressed the necessity of a similar experience for members of The Methodist Church.
“The drunkard,” wrote Wesley, “commenced to be sober and temperate; the whoremonger abstained from adultery and fornication; the unjust from oppression and wrong; the sluggard began to work with his hands, and the miser learned to deal his bread to the hungry.”
For Wesley, the heart-warming was no transient experience. It was the result of contact with the fires of saving-love which bum forever in the heart of God. It completely changed his life, and manifested itself in all his relationships with God and his fellowmen.
There is one thing we Methodists must guard against – the peril of exalting Wesley instead of Jesus Christ. John Wesley was one of the great Christians of all times, no doubt about that. But Wesley was great because he exalted Christ.
In the eighteenth century, most thoughtful people were seeking certainty in one way or another. Wesley sought certainty of salvation. For years he sought it diligently by self-discipline and good works. But he did not find Christian assurance. Until Aldersgate, he was lacking “the inward witness” of the Holy Spirit that speaks peace and assurance to the soul.
The Methodist movement, begun at Oxford University by his brother Charles and others, was essentially an earnest endeavor of these young men to “work out their own salvation.” Their fiery zeal was from the beginning turned outward, taking the form of many good works. But it included, also an avowed ambition to save their own souls. Charitable pursuits, the visiting of the sick and prisoners, alms-giving, evangelistic, missionary enterprises – all were largely inspired by their hearts’ craving for the assurance of personal salvation.
It didn’t take these very first Methodists long to find out that they had started at the wrong end. Could they give others what they themselves did not have?
In the autumn of 1735 the “Holy Club” (as their group at Oxford had been nicknamed) had grown in strength and influence. But it ceased its activities on the day the two Wesleys decided that God was calling them to America.
John felt called to go on a mission to the Indians; Charles decided to become secretary to the Governor of Georgia. “Our end,” wrote John, “in leaving our native country, was simple-to save our souls.” In time, the end was reached-but not at all as they thought. John converted no Indians; his “mission” turned out to be a failure.
In Savannah, Wesley had known Spangenberg, a simple, quiet-mannered Moravian pastor who was sustained by a Presence of which Wesley knew nothing. Wesley was quick to sense the difference. Under Spangenberg’s direct questioning, Wesley realized that he did not know his sins forgiven … that he could not say that he knew Jesus Christ. On shipboard, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Wesley found himself cringing with fear in the midst of a storm. But the Moravian passengers faced the peril with perfect poise. Why the difference? That question broke Wesley’s pride. Ever afterward, his prayer was to be delivered from a “fair-weather religion.”
This, Wesley’s greatest spiritual crisis, was created by the fact that he had no religion adequate for a crisis. For 13 years, his religion had been a load, and now his 13 years of burden-bearing produced no real confidence in God (who waits to carry our burdens. I Peter 5:7) In the twentieth century, we too are seeking certainty-in every field of endeavor, except the one that can bring peace to our troubled world. In the field of medical science, doctors were able to transplant a human heart from a 23 year old lady who was killed in an automobile accident to a 53 year old man whose heart was worn out. He lived for only two weeks, but the transplant was considered a success.
In the field of technological advancement, jet planes that now fly at the speed of 600 miles per hour will soon be replaced by jets that will travel 1600 miles per hour. In the outer space program, we are told that man will go to the moon within the next decade.
If we can know so much about all other phases of life, why don’t we know more about our relationship with the living God? It is inconceivable to think that God demands man to be born again without also giving ample knowledge of this relationship. How can a person experience God? Lots of individuals have only the experience of a religious tradition or ceremony. Not God. How can we move out of this deadness into the warmed climate of true Christian experience?
We can have Christian Assurance in our hearts, beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is God’s promise. We can know that our sins have been forgiven. We can be at peace with God. But first two conditions must be met:
(1) We must come to know Jesus as a Person. We may approach Him today, realize Him and be conscious of His Presence. Jesus can be just as real to us as any other person. He is not some mere theory, some inspiring memory, some vague personal influence; He is a Person to be approached, to be felt, to be trusted, to be loved, and obeyed – even unto death.
(2) We must acknowledge our need and confess our sins. Then comes the assurance of faith … or as Wesley called it “the faith of adherence.” For “he that believeth” with true living faith “has the witness in himself,” giving him assurance that he is God’s true child – forgiven, reclaimed and given the power of God to serve God and praise God n0w and forever.
by Steve | Apr 2, 1968 | Archive - 1968
Archive: The Dialogue We Need
April 1968
By James D. McCallie, Pastor, Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, Jeffersonville, Indiana Pleasant Grove Methodist Church, Charlestown, Indiana
This is the day of “dialogue” for churchmen of every persuasion. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are emerging from their traditional isolation to listen to each other and to recognize valid elements of a common religious ancestry.
Methodism, in keeping with her glorious heritage, stands in the forefront of the ecumenical scene. Wherever there have been efforts for interdenominational cooperation, we Methodists have been involved. We exercise strong leadership in the World Council of Churches, while we consummate union with a sister denomination, the E.U.B’s. And discussions are already underway toward involving the resultant United Methodist Church m an eventual nine-denomination merger.
Meanwhile, there are deep undercurrents of unrest and rumblings of discontent within The Methodist Church. The irony of the situation is that the ecumenical spirit which prevails between denominations is being undercut by internal ideological differences which divide a denomination against itself. The obvious problem in Methodism is that which is found in every other mainline Protestant denomination – the widening gulf between the church’s liberals and conservatives. The basic issue is theological, in other words.
I use the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” realizing their relativity in describing the source of conflict. Both emphases can be found within any theological context. However, there inevitably arises from the theological complexity of our time two distinctly different views of the character and content of divine revelation. One is primarily liberal, while the other is primarily conservative.
The conservative view of truth considers Jesus Christ and the Scripture to be God’s ultimate revelation. The liberal position diminishes the importance of Scripture and stresses the human aspects of Jesus and His work. The liberal tends toward a mancentered view; the conservative toward emphasis on the supernatural activity of a transcendent God, who became immanent in the Person of Christ.
Conservatives accept the absolute authority and complete integrity of the Bible as a witness to Christ’s lordship in terms of His recorded virgin birth, miracles, vicarious atonement, bodily resurrection, and personal return. This viewpoint is basically incompatible with the classical liberal position, which does not regard the complete Biblical portrait of Christ and His Gospel as being essentially definitive of His lordship, or normative for the church today.
Like other mainline Protestant denominations, The Methodist Church has a predominantly liberal leadership, while much of its constituency remains predominantly conservative. This does not discount the occasional conservative voices which have appeared even among the hierarchy, nor the liberal influences active in practically all congregations. Rather, it indicates that the breakdown of vital communications between the leadership of the church and its constituency has a bedrock theological foundation. The tension is greatest whenever the one point of view is considered a serious threat to the vested interests of the other.
What little encounter there is between liberals and conservatives today usually follows the anachronistic pattern of the “modernist-fundamentalist” controversy of a generation ago. Labels are exchanged with libel and caricature gives way to character assassination. The gulf widens between the “liberal” who wants to be rid of the “troublemaking fundamentalist” and the conservative who retreats deeper into his theological ghetto to avoid contamination by the “apostate modernist.”
Smear tactics and ascription of “guilt by association” keep the majority of Methodists in confusion concerning the real issues at stake. Too many non-conservatives apparently are under the illusion that all conservatives are die hard segregationists and supporters of rightest extremism. On the other hand, too many conservatives apparently are convinced that all non-conservatives are allied with Communist fronts, are anarchists, and accept the “death of God” and situational ethics.
This picture may seem a bit overdrawn, for clear-thinkers on both sides of the theological fence. But these erroneous images do persist, and they do divide our church. This sober fact makes some inescapable demands upon us. Basic Christian integrity dictates that liberals and conservatives alike make some mutually honest efforts to understand each other better. Light is needed in place of heat. Openness in place of tight-shut minds. Love in place of fear and suspicion.
It comes as somewhat of a surprise for a conservative to hear fellow ministers in the liberal camp express great apprehension about the supposed strength and influence of the conservative wing of the church. Actually, the conservative constituency is more widely scattered and less easily mobilized than most liberals imagine. Conservative evangelicals who want to be counted as loyal Methodists are often made to feel that they are the ones who face formidable obstacles in order to be true to their convictions.
Since conservatives must give an account to the liberal power structures within the church, many cautious churchmen are reluctant to express evangelical loyalty – for fear of being suspected of denominational disloyalty. They have discovered that a liberal mind-set can be as dogmatic as a conservative mind-set. Some liberals defend doctrinal indifference by glibly mis-quoting Wesley’s “think and let think” philosophy. But apparently these same liberals are willing to apply toleration to everyone – except their conservative brethren. Consequently, responsible Methodist evangelicals are reluctant to express openly the honest difficulties they feel in promoting the use of teaching and program materials which are often antagonistic to an evangelical, a Wesleyan, scriptural point of view.
Liberal inconsistency is exemplified in the recent action of an annual conference to outlaw charismatic teaching related to the practice of “tongues-speaking” – while no similar action was recorded to suppress the humanistic heresies which flourish throughout Methodism today. Liberal leadership obviously tolerates its own “new breed” of radicals to a far greater degree than those radicals who appear in the conservative camp.
Evangelicals face further handicap in the stigma created by reactionaries who use conservative theology to defend social noninvolvement and outmoded forms of piety. Some evangelicals are thus led astray by movements which thrive upon devilish distortion of truth, uncharitable attitudes, and negativism. This weakness feeds liberal suspicion toward all conservatives. And they can hardly be blamed for judging conservatives on the same basis they themselves are judged by conservatives – by the fruits born by their faith.
Probably the greatest hindrance to conservative Methodist strength and influence, however, is the large bloc of uncommitted Methodists who will give only lip service to conservative tenets. They do not question the time-honored creeds and customs of the church. But neither do these lukewarm Methodists take seriously the disciplines of Christian living which are inherent in true Scriptural Christianity. Refusing either to subscribe to the radical social policies advocated by liberals or to submit to the stringent Biblical demands of Christian discipleship advocated by conservatives, the mass of uncommitted Methodists maintain a deadening neutrality.
Thus, conservatives who consider themselves loyal to their Methodist heritage stand in de facto opposition to 1) intolerant ecclesiastical power structures, 2) disreputable conservative extremists, and 3) an undisciplined church membership. All conspire against the cause which conservative Methodists champion.
As a convinced conservative and an unapologetic evangelical who thinks he has had ample opportunity to test his convictions in the academic field and in the laboratory of life, I would offer a challenge to all who are of like persuasion. “Good News” provides a nation-wide medium by which concerned conservatives can begin to have conversation with each other. The result can be sharpened perspective, issues clearly defined, purposes clearly outlined, and objectives agreed upon. Through “Good News,” our scattered efforts can eventually be mobilized so that our witness can no longer be misunderstood, ignored, scorned by our church.
If the air is ever to be cleared, and a favorable atmosphere created for the dialogue we need, conservative evangelicals must take the initiative. I would suggest three ways for us to exercise a responsible and respectable influence in The United Methodist Church.
– First, let us witness consistently and convincingly in our own local situations. In order to do this, we must stay with our church. To leave The United Methodist Church under the pretext of finding greater freedom for witness is to abandon the one field which most needs our distinctive witness. If anyone has a right and a duty to maintain Methodist affiliation it is the conservative, standing in the Wesleyan tradition. We need no more specific official endorsement for our position than the doctrines and disciplines of our church.
However small a minority we may appear to be, history reminds us that God has never been dependent upon large majorities for the spiritual renewal of the church and also the reformation of society. His most effective work has been done through dedicated minorities. In my 15 years of ministry, I have yet to find any pastoral appointment to be a complete disappointment. Without exception, God has raised up Bible-believers therein and sealed the evangelical witness with at least one notable transformation of life. The battle is not only ours – it is the Lord’s.
– Second, let us seek wholesome fellowship with responsible conservatives everywhere. We must first find them among fellow Methodists lest we suppose, like Elijah, that we are lonelier than we really are. God guarantees a remnant sizeable enough to keep us from becoming discouraged.
We find this remnant not only in The United Methodist Church but also among evangelicals in all denominations. They are also drawn together by inter-denominated efforts such as the Billy Graham Crusades, Youth for Christ programs, Intervarsity Fellowships, and the like, constituting an ecumenical fellowship of sizeable proportions. (30 million according to estimates by the magazine “Christianity Today”.) There is no need to subsist on a spiritual starvation diet when such a trans-denominational spiritual fellowship is available.
Involvement in ultra-fundamentalist groups which distort facts and “grind axes” instead of exalting Jesus Christ do neither our Methodist heritage nor ourselves any positive and constructive good. But our ecumenical involvement with responsible evangelicals can be as refreshing and rewarding as we are willing to make it. Any venture to express genuine conservative unity across denominational lines will strengthen, rather than diminish, our concern for a vital evangelical witness within our own church.
– Third, let us stand up and be counted in all levels of Methodist program involvement. We cannot always do this without running some risk of misunderstanding or discrimination. Nor can this ever be done effectively without first having won the confidence of those who may differ with us. Prejudiced liberals have difficulty imagining that anyone can be exposed to the tenets of liberalism and remain unconvinced-unless that person is mentally or emotionally unbalanced.
If, however, we have proven to be reasonably competent in our own local situation, we shall have earned the right to be heard. And after all, there are honest liberals in the denominational power structure. They exemplify a tolerant and brotherly spirit which is the essence of true liberalism. We can count on the mounting array of competent evangelical scholarship. And also working for us is the spiritual bankruptcy of non-evangelical attempts at church renewal. Eventually this will vindicate us in our efforts to uphold Christianity that is Scriptural.
We can find encouragement in the statements of such Methodist leaders as Bishop Gerald Kennedy, who defended the rightful place of evangelicals in The Methodist Church (“Good News” lead article, Winter Issue, 1967). Dr. Harold De Wolf voices an appreciation of evangelical theology and experience in the life of the church (A Hard Rain and a Cross, pp. 32-36). Although such men are not always to be in complete theological agreement with us, we can appreciate their irenic attitude toward evangelicals.
Our task is to convince our liberal brethren that the conservative point of view can no longer legitimately be excluded from the high councils of the church. In order to accomplish this, we must first be convinced that such tolerant recognition can be won only by the disarming characteristics of the warm heart and the clear mind which shall always be the marks of a genuine Methodist.
by Steve | Apr 1, 1968 | Archive - 1968
Archive: Eschatology
April 1968
By J.B. Phillips
“Eschatology” is the doctrine or teaching about “the last things” – death, judgement, heaven and hell. Much of today’s Christianity is almost completely earthbound, and the words of Jesus about what follows this life are scarcely studied at all.
This, I believe, is partly due to man’s enormous technical successes, which make him feel master of the human situation. But it is also partly due to our scholars and experts. By the time they have finished with their dissection of the New Testament and with their explaining away as “myth” all that they find disquieting or unacceptable to the modern mind, the Christian way of life is little more than humanism with a slight tinge of religion.
It is not only advertisers who attempt to deaden our critical faculties by clever words. There are New Testament scholars who, whether consciously or not, do the same thing. Thus, if you are to be thought up-to-date and “with it,” you are expected to believe in current phrases. One of these is “realized eschatology,” which means that all those things which Jesus foretold have happened, either at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 or in the persecutions of the Church. In other words, the prophetic element in the teaching of Jesus is of no value at all to us in the twentieth century. Such a judgement makes Jesus less of a prophet than Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and the rest.
I find myself quite unable to accept this. There is an element of the prophecy of Jerusalem’s terrible downfall and of the desecration of the Temple – the horror of which we who are not Jews find hard to appreciate. But the prophetic vision goes far beyond this. It envisages the end of the life of humanity on this planet, when, so to speak, eternity irrupts into time. There is no time scale: there is rarely such an earthbound factor in prophetic vision. The prophet sees the truth in compelling terms, but he cannot tell the day or the hour of any event, still less the time of the end of the whole human affair.
We are ourselves somewhere in the vast worldwide vision which Jesus foresaw. And for all we know, we may be near the end of all things.
You simply cannot read the New Testament fairly and come to the conclusion that the world is going to become better and better, happier and happier, until at last God congratulates mankind on the splendid job they have made of it! Quite the contrary is true; not only Jesus but Paul, Peter, John, and the rest never seriously considered human perfectibility in the short span of earthly life. This is the preparation, the training ground, the place where God begins His work of making us into what He wants us to be. But it is not our home. We are warned again and again not to value this world as a permanency. Neither our security nor our true wealth are rooted in this passing life. We are strangers and pilgrims, and while we are under the pressure of love to do all that we can to help our fellows, we should not expect a world which is largely God-resisting to become some earthly paradise. All this may sound unbearably old-fashioned, but this is the view of the New Testament.
In a true and real sense the Kingdom of God was already established upon earth, but none of the New Testament writers expects the vast work of redeeming the whole world to take place either easily or quickly.
Some, at least, of the early Christians apparently expected the return of their risen Lord in power in a very short time. Both Peter and Paul had to remind their converts that the “time” was entirely a matter of God’s choosing. Meanwhile the Christian life must be led with patience and courage, the true Gospel must be proclaimed, and Christian worship continued. The light must shine in a dark and cruel world.
It might be thought that if a man’s hope and treasure lay in another, unseen world, he would have little contact with, or interest in, the world in which he is only a temporary resident. Of course there have been, and are, sects who live apart from the world. But that is not the general picture. It is not usually the atheists and agnostics who are to be found fighting disease, ignorance, and fear in the most dangerous and difficult parts of the world. And this is because the Christian faith, although inevitably rooted in “heaven,” is incurably earthly. The seeds of this paradoxical attitude are scattered throughout the New Testament. “Religion” which does not express itself in compassion is a dead and, indeed, a dangerous thing. Yet the root of the relief of disease, the removal of ignorance, and the teaching of faith lies in the love of God. We love because God first loved us.
I feel I must stress this point because we seem to live in an atmosphere of “either/or,” whereas it is really a matter of “both/ and.” Certainly it is useless to preach a Gospel of the soul’s redemption to a starving man. But it is equally valueless (and the world around is full of examples) to make man affluent in this world and at the same time deprive him of any sense of God or of any meaningful life after death. “Compassion” and “charity” are both popular words today, while faith in God is regarded as largely irrelevant. But in fact both compassion and charity can be monstrously misused unless they are informed by the love of God. Hence we get situations in which compassion goes out to the violent thug who assaults an old lady for her meagre savings, but none at all to her! Charity means instant social acceptance for the adulterer but little compassion for his deceived and deprived wife. To love God is the first and greatest commandment, said Jesus. And this is the priority insisted on throughout the New Testament.
J. B. PHILLIPS, an English pastor and student of Holy Scriptures, is world famous for his popular translation, “The New Testament in Modem English,” © 1958 Macmillan. Our article, “J.B. Phillips on Eschatology” is reprinted by permission from his latest book, “Ring of Truth” © 1967 Macmillan. -Editor
