by Steve | Nov 3, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Archive: Speaking Out
An occasional column for guest opinion
WCC: What More Can We Say?
by Riley B. Case
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has once again become the center of controversy. This time it’s because of a Reader’s Digest article entitled “Karl Marx or Jesus Christ” (August 1982), and a recent segment on CBS ‘s 60 Minutes.
To those acquainted with the WCC, criticism is not new. The council is accused of being more interested in leftwing political movements than in proclaiming the Gospel.
In response, WCC defenders are crying “foul.” Journals of denominations related to the WCC have carried lengthy rebuttals to the Reader’s Digest article, calling the effort a “hatchet job.” UM Church formal and informal presentations by bishops and superintendents, along with much printed material, lambaste the critics and defend the council as the Church’s conscience- brought to bear on the problems of the world.
In light of the criticism and counter-criticism, is there anything more that can be said about the WCC? I believe so.
There is much that is positive about the WCC. It was my privilege to attend the two-week World Council Assembly in Evanston, Illinois, in 1954. I heard the preaching, read the literature, and listened to the debates. I was impressed by the deep faith of many of the participants. With 120,000 others, I lit a candle in Soldiers’ Field, Chicago, as a dramatic, symbolic witness to “Christ, the Hope of the World.”
One cannot go through an experience like that without a certain appreciation for the council. The WCC is a gathering point where Christians from many countries and many traditions can discuss matters of mutual concern and share their common faith together. The WCC is needed for the coordination of certain ministries (like relief work) that can best be done ecumenically.
At the same time, we need to recognize that sincere Christians have problems with the WCC. Highly respected churchmen, such as Helmut Thielicke, Jacques Ellul, and Peter Berger, men who can hardly be accused of operating from political motives, have expressed their disillusionment with the WCC.
The question most often voiced is, “Do leaders of the WCC believe there is salvation only in Jesus Christ?” The WCC is most accommodating toward other world religions, but most intolerant of systems judged to be racist or economically unjust.
An anti-American and anticapitalistic flavor is present in wee pronouncements. WCC rhetoric often sounds suspiciously like Marxist rhetoric. While the WCC claims it does not advocate violence, it continues to give its blessing to groups that do advocate violence. Its position, in fact, is on record:
All else failing, the churches [should] support resistance movements, including revolutions, which are aimed at the elimination of political and economic tyranny which makes racism possible (The Consultation on Racism, 1969).
For evangelical Christians, the concern with the WCC is more than just the political and economic stances of the WCC. Rather, it has to do with what evangelicals understand to be the essence of faith and mission in the Church.
Many, like the Reader’s Digest, criticize the WCC from a conservative political point of view. The WCC has “bad” politics and “bad” economics.
For evangelical (and many other) Christians a greater concern is that the WCC has bad theology.
WCC activists would emphasize a this-worldly religion, instead of traditional Christianity, which would stress the fallenness of mankind and all human structures, a salvation only in Jesus Christ, and a restoration of creation only at the end times. According to these activists, God is at work everywhere—in the secular world as well as the Church, whether in Cuban socialism or in Malcom X or the African National Congress (the revolutionary group in South Africa)—to bring about His purposes.
Those purposes can be summed up in the word justice, the new religious code word which would subsume everything else in the faith. Evangelism should contribute to justice. Feeding the hungry should be handled to promote justice. All the Church’s resources should be enlisted for justice.
Unfortunately, this particular understanding of justice seems to owe more to sociology than to the Bible. Biblical concepts of just and unjust no longer refer to the saved and lost, or to believers and unbelievers, but to oppressed and oppressors, or to the rich and the poor. Traditional Biblical ideas are turned upside down and inside out in the hands of WCC activists.
This is nowhere more apparent than in the Program to Combat Racism. Since 1970 this program has funded 130 organizations to the tune of over $5 million. Almost none of these are churches or organizations with a stated Christian purpose. They are groups with political, social, economic, and racial axes to grind. They have no commitment to Christian beliefs, ethics, or goals. The WCC says the grants go for humanitarian purposes. Of course if the aid was really for humanitarian purposes, the grants could be given to churches. The grants are political statements which intentionally identify the name of Christ and the mission of the Church with a specific and secular, political, and social program (which just happens to be left of center).
If this is not “another gospel,” then what is it?
The problem is bigger than the WCC. Unfortunately, the same kind of thinking that characterizes parts of the WCC also characterizes the National Council of Churches, and denominational agencies like the UM Board of Global Ministries. Also, unfortunately, there seems to be an unwillingness in these organizations to admit the validity of any other point of view. Supporters of the WCC have said they would welcome responsible criticism, but they have yet to admit that any criticism that has been voiced is responsible. Indeed, most detractors from the WCC line are discounted as racists and right-wingers.
What can be done? Recognize that the problem is primarily ideological. It is important for evangelical Christians to know their faith, and to know how that faith relates to the forces that operate in the world. We believe truth will ultimately win out. We must believe there are still persons with genuine concern for the Church who will put the cause of Christ before political ideology, and that these persons will eventually be in positions to bring about change. To that end we pray and work.
by Steve | Nov 2, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Archive: Mission: Mississippi
MISSION: Pilgrimage of Love and Learning
PLACE: Voice of Calvary, Jackson,Mississippi
AUTHOR: Duffy Robbins, Director, UMYF, Wilmore, Kentucky
PHOTOGRAPHER: Keith Koteskey, Member, Wilmore UMYF
June 25, 1982. …Conversation is humming around a Memphis motel room as 15 members of the UM Youth Fellowship (Wilmore, KY) scatter about on the usual array of motel furniture. It has been a hard day of driving in hot summertime temperatures, but a quick swim in the motel pool has made us feel human again. We are ready now to begin the first of several nightly debriefing sessions. A quick glance around the room shows expressions of enthusiasm mixed with curiosity as we contemplate what the next 10 days will hold.
Mission: Mississippi has been a dream of mine for the last three years. The more I heard of John Perkins’ strategic work of black Christian community development, the more I was impressed with the practical implementation and Biblical integrity of Voice of Calvary Ministries (VOC) in Mendenhall and Jackson Mississippi.
All group participants have had to complete a Scripture memory project, read the story of the founding of Voice of Calvary in John Perkins’ book, Let Justice Roll Down, as well as read the booklet, Blacks and the White Jesus by Salley and Behm (lnterVarsity Press). One of the more difficult dimensions of this orientation work was the writing of a one-page paper entitled: “What It is Like to Be Black in Jessamine County” (our home county). It wasn’t easy to put ourselves inside the skin of another person.
The motel room is quiet as the team members share their expectations and hopes for the trip. Bruce, a high school senior, stuns most of us with his honesty: “I’ve grown up in the deep south—lived 13½ years of my life down here where it’s easy to grow up with racial prejudice. One of the things I’m looking for on this trip is for God to work me over … help me to see blacks not for what they are in terms of their differences from me but who they are as people.”
Melissa, a ninth grader, shares, “I have been struggling with spiritual laziness lately. I’m hoping that the Lord will use this trip to set me straight and I’ll become consistent in my growth again.”
Matt, whose father is a seminary student, explains, “I’ve been considering the mission field as a possible place for me to serve in the future. I’m looking for God to help me see His plan more clearly this week.”
Saturday, June 26. … Memphis to Jackson—a hot four hours. Typically, our church van has been running hot.
We arrive in Jackson by midafternoon and work our way across the city to West Jackson—a grim stretch of decaying, neglected real estate between Lynch and Robinson Streets where most of the city’s blacks live. It’s raining, and the mood is one of discomfort.
I wonder what our team members are thinking as our van passes run-down homes, dilapidated buildings, and vacant lots. Perhaps our feelings would be different if we were just passing through.
We pull up in the driveway of the Samaritan’s Inn (aptly named), the place where VOC volunteers are housed.
The neighborhood, despite our resolve and faith, scares us. Across the street from the house in which we are staying is a bar which boasts a remarkable diversity of graffiti on its walls. One which certainly caught our eye is a prominent sign which announces, “No Weapons Inside.” For a group of middle-class teens who are used to seeing restaurant signs no more foreboding than “Kiwanis meets here every Tuesday,” this scene heightened our sensitivity to the real need of this area.
Just to cool off, our group goes over to a mall in the center of town. We soon notice that there are no other whites around. A bunch of blacks spot us and call out, “Look at all that white meat. ” Our youth feel intimidated, in the minority, treated as others have been treated for centuries. The tables are reversed.
Sunday, June 27. … Today we attend worship at Voice of Calvary Fellowship, which meets in the Masonic Lodge on Lynch Street. We are all impressed by the warmth of these brothers and sisters toward one another and toward us as well. The VOC Fellowship is an interracial fellowship, a testimony to what can happen when emphasis is placed on preaching, living, and serving in the full context of Biblical evangelism.
The VOC Fellowship choir sang and it was super. Most of our group had never heard a black gospel choir before. They believe what they are singing and they enjoy singing it! The classic commentary on the morning worship service came from one of our group members who exclaim with a ring of wonder: “I can’t believe it! We’ve been in church two hours and I didn’t even notice.”
Sunday afternoon we receive a phone call from Janis Palmore, director of volunteer services for VOC. She informs us that we will be moving to the John Perkins International Study Center.
We get settled in at the Study Center with ample time to meet several of the residents- summer interns working in various capacities with VOC. After supper most of our group went outside to play with neighborhood kids, who had spread the word that there was fun to be had. We found ourselves surrounded by about 30 children.
One of our girls was to remark at the debriefing that night: “It was neat today the way the kids came to us when we went outside. They have not yet learned to fear whites or dislike them.” We promised the kids in the neighborhood we’d be back.
Monday, June 28. … Up early this morning, we are off to the VOC Fellowship House on a nearby block. We sit in on the weekly VOC staff meeting. Lem Tucker, executive director of VOC ministries begins with a thoughtful devotion about cheerful and obedient servanthood.
Part of our morning is spent touring Jackson, visiting several of the VOE ministry sites. Besides the Study Center, a Child Evangelism Ministry House organizes activities for about 250 children every week of the summer. A health center provides much-needed, low-cost health care. A newer dimension of VOC is Horambe House, a discipleship ministry for young men.
Tuesday, June 29. … Today is our first full day of work at the VOC Co-op stores. Our group is split into two teams: one works at the Thriftco store in Jackson while the other works about 30 miles away in Edwards, Mississippi. Both teams begin the work they will be doing most of the week: painting shelves, sorting clothes, pricing items.
Wednesday, June 30. … Our days are falling into a pattern.
Last night we were part of an orientation meeting at the Study Center where we saw a movie about VOC’s mission of building black leadership. One of the visiting black workers asked this disturbing question, “VOC keeps telling us your goal is building black leaders, but how come I see so many white leaders everywhere?”
It was a good question, and this young girl was apparently voicing the concern of several in her group. A significant amount of black leadership is visible at VOC, but it is not all black. The response to her question was that in time there will be more black leadership, but that VOC in Jackson is still too young to see the full harvest of its labors.
Friday, July 2. … The last work day. All projects are finished by lunch time. We spend the afternoon touring the VOC operation in rural Mendenhall where the whole operation began. This place holds some special feelings, for all of us had read Let Justice Roll Down, and knew the blood, sweat, and tears (literally) out of which God raised this work. It is fitting that our week at VOC should end where VOC began. It is as if we have been working in a tree house and now we are being shown the roots of the tree.
We leave with mixed feelings: thanksgiving for what God is doing, and guilt for what has been done and not been done in the name of law and order. Too often whites have not only not “let justice roll down,” but have “let justice roll away.” Insights from team members vary. Paul felt he had learned not to fear blacks automatically. Kathy felt that God had been speaking to her about the strength of her commitment. I am going home with a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, and gratitude to God that we could have a hand in what God is doing through Voice of Calvary Ministries. That is one chunk of the Kingdom that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss!
by Steve | Nov 1, 1982 | Archive - 1982
What can the early church teach us about the conditions for power in the church of today?
Archive: The Price of Spiritual Power
by Michael Green, Rector, St. Aldate’s Anglican Church, Oxford, England
Reprinted with permission from the June 1981 issue of Pastoral Renewal, a newsletter for pastors.
Spiritual power in the church: that, of course, is what we all want. At least, we think we do. And there are many instant remedies for restoring spiritual power to the church; as many as the various brands of hair restorers, and as useless.
In most parts of the western world the church is no longer a power to be reckoned with. It has had its day and is no longer in the van of decision-making and attitude-forming in the community of nations. It has a better organization and structure than ever. In some countries it is blessed—or cursed—with enormous wealth. It produces endless paper. But in the end it does not achieve very much. The power has gone.
You must forgive me. I keep going back to the New Testament to seek inspiration and direction. Skip the rest of this article if you do not want to follow me. But I have a feeling that the Spirit and the Word are uncomfortably closely intertwined, and that if we want to know the power of the Spirit in our church life it is to the Word of God that we must turn.
I want to begin at the beginning—at the beginning, that is, of gentile Christianity. Let’s look at the city from which Christianity burst out like a torrent from a lake once the dam has been breached. The city was Antioch on the Orontes. This was the rich, powerful capital of the Roman province of Syria. It was the third city in the world. It was multiracial; it was also militaristic, libertarian, wealthy, and sex-mad. Very modern. Yet its church became one of the greatest spiritual powerhouses in the world and launched the first mission into Europe. And where would we be without that?
Where lay the secret? There were, in fact, a number of secrets which they discovered and which are always the accompaniment of spiritual power. We read about them in Acts, chapters 11 and 13.
1. The power of every-member ministry. This church was not founded by apostles or by the church-growth experts. It happened by mistake. You see, some believers in Jerusalem found the place too hot to hold them when they were testifying to Jesus, so they moved up the Phoenician seaboard until they came to Antioch. Traditional folks to start with, they spoke only to the proper people, the Jews. But in Antioch they found they could not keep quiet, and they told outsiders about the good news of the Lord Jesus (Acts 11:20). Remember, there was not a minister among them; just ordinary Christians, full of Jesus. It communicated powerfully. It still does.
2. The power of fellowship. An amazing place, Antioch. The first believers broke the kosher barriers down. They found it ridiculous to tolerate any man-made barriers, because they were united with brothers in Christ.
It is revolutionary stuff, of course. It raises the eyebrows when senators and prisoners sit down together in Christian fellowship at Fellowship House in Washington. But unless our churches show a quality of love and caring which surpasses anything in contemporary society, we shall not be demonstrating the power of the Gospel; we shall merely be talking about it. And that takes nobody in.
Just look at those first believers mentioned as the leadership in Antioch (13:1). There was Barnabas, a Cypriot of priestly family, Simeon nicknamed “swarthy” (no prizes for guessing his color), Lucius from Cyrene in North Africa (another black man), Manaen from “top New York society,” and Saul! What a bunch of improbable partners. Yet that is the quality of Christian fellowship that spoke with such power at Antioch. If you want spiritual power in your church, pay attention to the quality of the fellowship; It must be totally open, caring, honest, and sacrificial.
3. The power of shared leadership. We are not told who was bishop or leading minister in Antioch. There wasn’t one. Instead, five men constituted the leadership. Five very different men. They worked as a team. I guess they did nothing by vote. They prayed till they were of one mind. Their fellowship of leaders had a profound effect on the church. It was a model others could follow in their fellowship groupings.
Most churches I know, of whatever denomination, find such a model of leadership too costly, too demanding. So they go for the one-man band. And the minister has a breakdown because he can’t do everything and is always looking around for folks to help him. The people criticize him behind his back both because he doesn’t do everything and because his one-man-band approach inhibits other gifts of leadership within the body of Christ from manifesting themselves.
They had a shared leadership at Antioch. We have in our church. It works.
Two types of leadership were active at Antioch: prophets and teachers. The teachers were well-taught, well-prepared, and predictable. The prophets were impetuous and totally unpredictable. You would not have thought they would get on. Yet they did. That partnership became the source of great power in the church. Would you dare risk it?
4. The power of dynamic worship. Look at Acts 13:2-3. They were worshiping the Lord (literally, holding liturgy to the Lord). They were serious about it, so serious that they gave themselves to fasting. Suddenly the Holy Spirit guided one of the congregation to get up in the middle of the service and deliver a prophecy, a direct word from God into their situation. It was a remarkable message: “Take your two best leaders and send them off on a mission for which I have called them. ” Most remarkable of all, they acted on that revelation. They fasted again, prayed, and sent the two men off on that epoch-making first missionary journey.
We know it so well. But think of the quality of worship that little cameo presupposes. They were united in worship. That’s a marvelous thing.
The unity, the intensity, the variety in worship should raise questions in the mind of the stranger which it is the purpose of preaching to explain. But you don’t often get that Godcenteredness in worship, or that concentration of the whole congregation on the Lord, or the willingness to fast, or the readiness for a member to break in with a word from God, or the church’s willingness, after testing it, to act on it. Prayer is often pathetically weak and unspecific. Many congregations would not know if they had had any answers to prayer because they had not been serious enough or specific enough to notice if they had been answered. As for fasting, it’s not our thing. And as for sending out our two best ministers-you must be out of your mind!
You never get spiritual power in a church unless the worship is mighty and God-centered, unless unity and sacrifice and prayer and fasting are part of the life of that church. But when those elements are present, along with praise and joy and freedom, well, I’ll tell you what happens. People come to repentance and faith in Christ before ever the sermon comes on. They are converted through the sense of God that comes through the worship. Could that happen through the worship in your church?
5. The power of consistent Biblical teaching. There was plenty of that at Antioch. They took teaching so seriously that they imported Barnabas, and he in turn dug out Paul from Tarsus to come and help him. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a large company of people (11:26). We have a further reference to their teaching in 13:1, and an extended period of teaching followed their return from the first missionary journey (14:26-28).
Very few churches take teaching seriously. As a result, church members do not even begin to suspect that there might be a Christian mind on major issues of the day—let alone adopt it. The underlying Christian understanding in most congregations is puerile, the unbelief vast, and the conformity to the world’s standards almost complete. The lack of critique of contemporary culture by the churches, the lack of concern over social and political themes, the lack of wrestling with the Gospel and how to translate it without dilution into the thought forms of the day, the absence of training courses and study programs are appalling.
A lively church should teach, teach, teach. Teaching for agnostics, for new converts, for leadership, for personal relationships, for mission. Teaching by proclamation, by discussion, by study, by joint activities of teacher and pupil—all are valuable. A church where there is little grasp by the ordinary member of the dynamic Word of God is not going to display spiritual power.
6. The power of the Holy Spirit. That is what we would have noticed about the Antioch church. It was full of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit would be seen flowing from Barnabas in his faith, his teaching, his encouragement of others (11:24). The Holy Spirit was very evident in the church: they allowed a man like Agabus, a visitor at that, to speak under the influence of the Spirit in their assembly, urging them to make a major contribution for the victims of a natural disaster that had not yet taken place. They then gave sacrificially for Christians whom they had never seen and of whose communal ism and financial incompetence they doubtless disapproved! …
And the fascinating thing was that these men at Antioch did not oppose the Spirit, as we often do, by disobedience, unbelief, ecclesiastical tradition, or theological prejudice. They were open to the leading of the Spirit, open to His gifts, open to obey Him. And that made for power. …
7.The power of Christlikeness.Had you noticed that it was at Antioch that the disciples were for the first time called Christians (11:26)? They did not call themselves Christians, you will notice. It was a nickname given them by others. They saw the disciples as “Jesus people “—sent by Him, devoted to Him, like Him.
I fancy that this is the supreme mark of spiritual power in any church: when the locals notice the Christlikeness of the church members. …
Well, there are seven pathways to spiritual power, as I see them in this primitive church which became the launching-pad of world mission. I doubt whether God’s conditions for power in the church have changed. The question is, do we want that power badly enough? And are we willing to pay the price?
by Steve | Sep 1, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Archive: On Things Left Behind
By James V Heidinger II, Editor, Good News
Though we speak much of pluralism these days, at the same time I am hearing increasingly of theological liberals who cannot discuss theological issues with evangelicals for very long without becoming emotional, angry, accusatory, and—to put it bluntly—losing their cool.
One wonders, why the anger and cynicism? Why the hostility bitterly expressed toward various expressions of evangelicalism?
A partial explanation may come from an encounter C. S. Lewis had with men of the British Air Force in Norfolk, England, in 1941. Lewis was invited there to speak by Stuart Barton Babbage, then Chaplain of the heavy bomber squadron.
When advised that his audience would be mostly officers and few airmen, because the latter would experience considerable ostracism for attending religious services, Lewis decided he would share with them the cost of being a Christian.
After outlining the forsaking and denial of the Savior, culminating in the Crucifixion, Lewis went on to talk about what it had cost him personally as an Oxford don to follow Christ.
He remarked that one might expect to find within the university environment, and particularly Oxford University, a measure of tolerance and liberality, some recognition and acceptance of the sanctity of honest belief and conviction. Lewis noted that his liberal and rational friends had no objections to his intellectual interest in Christianity. Indeed, it was a proper subject for argument and debate. But his interest in seriously practicing it was going much too far.
With deep feeling, Lewis told the airmen he did not mind being accused of religious mania—he was accustomed to that. But what he was unprepared for was the intense hostility and animosity of his professional colleagues. There, in the academic community, Lewis unexpectedly found himself an object of ostracism, abuse. He could understand impatience but not indignation, criticism but not ostracism.
One is struck today by the intensity with which many church leaders reject the claims of evangelical faith. Few are ever neutral toward it. Rather, one senses an intellectual inoculation against evangelicalism which will scarcely allow objective investigation.
Yet, many of these same church leaders and theologians were reared in an evangelical environment as youth. Maybe this is a secret to their strange antipathy toward evangelical faith. That is, through college and seminary days they became convinced that evangelical faith was not intellectually defensible.
Maybe this is why many have joined the ranks of the scornful. It is a common defense mechanism we are all tempted to use to fortify ourselves in our own thinking—to deride unfairly that which we have chosen to reject.
Is it not inevitable, then, that when one has abandoned the faith of one’s father and mother, when one has forgotten the faith of one’s early childhood and church school days, when one views as indefensible the faith commitment that led one into the ministry in earlier years, when one smiles condescendingly at the naivete of the prayer-meeting faithful, when one has rejected the reliability and authority of Scripture, when one has denied the possibility of the supernatural in this aeon, or when one has embraced a lifestyle that contradicts the moral guidelines of Biblical faith—I say if these or any combination of these have transpired in one’s life, is not the normal and predictable response toward that which has been abandoned … scorn?
by Steve | Jul 16, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Archive: Whatever Happened to HELL?
by G. Roger Schoenhals
adapted from an article ©1977 Light and Life Press
I remember hearing a sermon on hell. I was a child, and it so frightened me I wanted to be a Christian just to escape going to that awful place. That was 30 years ago.
Things have changed today. A sermon on hell is about as rare as a wild buffalo whistling “Dixie.” We hear about God’s love, discipleship, spiritual gifts, social ministries, moral development. But the wrath of God? Zilch.
One reason is the pendulum. In our reaction to the excesses and distortions of the past, we have swung over to the other side where we feel comfortable only with positive themes like love and spiritual fulfillment. The “good life” brand of Christianity has little room for God’s holiness, the wretchedness of sin, everlasting judgment, sorrow, repentance, and righteous living.
Another reason may be our desire to make converts—dangle the goodies in front of them and tell them the stuff about hell later.
And then there’s the contemporary emphasis on determinism—you really can’t help being the way you are. Its great exponent, B.F. Skinner, has done much to relieve us of our guilt. He has taught us that we are only social animals acting in conditioned ways. So there’s no such thing as personal sin, accountability, judgment, or hell.
One of the strongest influences leading us away from a serious view of hell is the philosophy of humanism. Man is good. At his best, he would never let a fellow human being suffer. And since God is better than man, He would certainly not allow any of His creatures to suffer eternally in hell!
This line of reasoning presented itself in a TV news special on being “born again.” Bill Moyers zeroed in on the question of hell with a Christian teenager: “I know people who are moral and good and who do not claim to be born again. How could a good God allow them to go to hell?”
The young man shrugged his shoulders and answered, “That’s what the Bible says.”
Ah, now we come to the basic issue. The Bible. Do we believe it? Is it the Word of God?
The pendulum, easy believism, determinism, humanism—these are all peripheral. At the core is a breakdown of Biblical authority. The less authority people ascribe to the Scripture, the less seriously people take the teachings on hell.
We can play our games with the Bible, sidestepping and distorting passages that conflict with contemporary thought. We can try to tunnel under, go over, or steer around references that offend our human sensitivities. We can ignore, pretend, and even cast aside. But does that change anything? The Word of God remains true. Forever.
The church’s calling is not to judge and distort the Word; it is to believe it and to declare it to a crooked and perverse generation. The entire Word. Even the parts about hell.
Jesus believed in hell. Get a Bible and look up the references. (Matthew 5:22; 8:12; 13:42; 24:51; 25:41,46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 12:5; 16:23-24; John 5:29.) He didn’t mince words. Some say He talked more about hell than about heaven.
Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. It was never intended for man. We sentence ourselves to hell by going against God’s plan for our salvation. He is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (II Peter 3:9 RSV)
Hell is horrible. The way we throw that word around today only dilutes our understanding of the actual conditions. Even the analogies in Scripture (lake of fire, bottomless pit, gnashing teeth) do injustice to the reality of being totally cut off from all that is good and true.
Hell is eternal. The teaching of a temporary punishment is a perversion of the truth. Jesus clearly declared that hell is final and forever.
I’m not calling for a return to the old days when preachers, like Jonathan Edwards, dangled their listeners over the fiery lake of hell. And I’m not urging for a reduction of our teaching and preaching on God’s love. I’m pleading for balance. For the whole picture: love which includes the necessary dimension of His holy wrath.
What happens when the church takes seriously the Biblical teaching of hell? A soberness fills our thinking and praying. A sense of urgency grips us. We proclaim salvation earnestly.
Recognizing the holy and just nature of God we show greater concern for righteous living. We flee from evil and from all that is impure. We desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
And, most important, we gain a clearer understanding of the love of God. It’s only as we see the awfulness of sin and how much God hates it that we fall more deeply in love with the pure Son of God who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world that we might be saved from guilt and delivered from the wrath of a holy God. God’s love is hollow without hell.
by Steve | Jul 9, 1982 | Archive - 1982
Archive: “Go…” The Great Commission
by Charles R. Britt, Assistant Professor of Family & Child Development
Auburn University Pastor, Waverly United Methodist Church, Auburn, Alabama
What is the New Testament mandate for missions? Ask any mission-minded, Biblically-aware Christian and you are likely to have Matthew 28:19-20 quoted in reply. So powerful, attractive, and compelling has this statement of the resurrected Jesus been, in the centuries-long history of the Church, that we have come to know this passage as The Great Commission. In the list of ordinary, run-of-the-mill Biblical references it is likely to be known along with The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), The Love Chapter (I Corinthians 13), and The Prodigal Son (Luke 15).
Historically and currently, wherever there is a vital thrust in Christian world missions, Matthew 28:19-20 functions with effectiveness in at least three ways:
1. It is taken to represent the mind of the resurrected Christ as He addresses His Church in every place, in every generation.
2. It is taken as a personal address. This word of the Risen Lord is not addressed to the Church in general. It is addressed to me.
It might be difficult to find any missions leader today declaring as Robert E. Speer is said to have declared to an earlier generation, “The burden of proof is not upon the person who would go but upon the person who would stay.” In many sections of the Christian Church today, the imperative to be involved in missions is taken very personally. The great missions convocations of Inter-Varsity bear ample testimony to this.
3. The imperative is understood continuously, if not exclusively, to be an indicative pointing to the ocean – crossing, culture – crossing, racial line-crossing nature of Christian world missions. This, despite all efforts to implant other concepts of mission, is still the compelling image of world mission entertained by a high proportion of concerned Christian men and women.
It is said that the Duke of Wellington was once asked about Christian missions. His reply, with specific reference to The Great Commission was, “You have your marching orders.” I would not quarrel with this—I would affirm it.
There is much evidence from the world scene which renders the sending and being-sent aspects of Christian world missions as imperative today as ever. One illustration will suffice.
Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill (Call to Mission, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1970) speaks of the Fon, a West African people, living in the former French colony of Dahomey. These people number a million. Among them there are “a handful of Protestants and a rather large number of Roman Catholics … 600,000 people, equal in number to the population of Nevada and Wyoming together [who] not merely had never heard the gospel but were not in a position to hear if they wished” [italics added]. Bishop Neill refers to a study made in West Africa in the mid 1960s.
Missionaries? The case for their sending and their going is indisputable. This remains true despite all we now think we know of the further need to divest the expatriate missionary of every trace of cultural, spiritual, economic, political imperialism. (It is doubtful if that imperialism was ever so pronounced as some current commentators on the world Christian movement would have us believe.) The recognition of this need is at least as old as the 1659 advice given Roman Catholic missionaries by the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith: ” What could be more absurd than to transport France, Spain, Italy or some other European country to China? Do not introduce all that to them, but only the faith ….”
That missionaries should be sent and that they should go, for most of us is unquestionable.
The how of their going is the real question. In search of answers to this question we may turn to The Great Commission as it appears in John 17:18, 21 and 20:21. Jesus is speaking:
As the Father has sent Me into the world, so I have sent you into the world … that the world may believe that Thou didst send me (17:18,21). Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you (20:21).
John R. W. Stott calls this “the most crucial … the most neglected because it is the most costly … ” form in which our records state our Lord’s will to call the world to Himself.
Reading these verses together, several urgently important emphases emerge:
1. Jesus’ own life’s work is a fulfillment of the sending nature of God. “The Father has sent me. …”
2. Jesus’ relationship to His disciples is that of the Sender to the sent. “I send you. …”
3. The manner of the coming of Jesus is to be the manner of the going of His disciples. “As … so. …”
It then becomes incumbent upon us to seek understanding of the manner of the coming of Jesus. Let us consider these:
1. He came in humility. The stories of His birth illustrate this. They are of a part with the Philippian description of His self-emptying. (Compare especially Luke 2:1-20 with Philippians 2:5-9.)
2. He came as a servant. The feeding and healing miracles of our Lord, linked with John’s account of the foot washing in the Upper Room, speak volumes concerning our Lord’s acceptance of the servant role as the model for His coming among us. (Compare Mark 4:21-41 with John 13:1-16.)
3. He came to restore full humanity here and now. These healing miracles recorded in the Gospels are not only evidences of the power of God expressing itself through Jesus Christ, they are also expressions of the limitless good will of God. They reveal His concern for setting human life free from that which in any way binds, inhibits, or diminishes it. Choose five acts of healing recorded in the Gospels and you’ll discover men and women set free from all manner of disabilities. They are saved in a most literal and meaningful manner.
I take it that this kind of salvation, though not the only dimension in which Christ redeems, is an integral part of the Christian mission.
4. There is an awesome more to Christian salvation of which we must speak. Christian salvation has an eternal dimension. It reaches beyond time, history, and this present life. The journey from death unto life which we make through a given faith in Christ is more than a totally earth-centered, here-and-now experience. There is the challenging reality of the ultimate and the final in hearing and receiving, or in hearing and rejecting the Gospel.
Any Christian who can speak lightly without heartbreak of the ultimate, eternal, negative destiny of men and women without Christ needs a reexamination of his or her moral foundations. We are, after all, disciples of One who wept over an unrepentant city and who spoke of the flood tides of joy which sweep through heaven when one sinner repents. The thought that some should be away from God—lost—through all eternity took Jesus to the cross. It ought to send us daily renewed into the task of Christian missions. To think that we are co-laborers with God in opening the gates of eternal life for all who hear and who believe should be reward enough.
5. Jesus came to the world.
In the New Testament “the world” is a term used both positively and negatively. In I John 2: 15 “the world” is that which is not to be loved by Christians. In John 3:16 “the world” is the object of God’s sending and giving mission through Jesus Christ.
If we look at the life of Jesus found in the Gospels we arrive at an understanding of “the world” to which He was sent as being the totality of human life. It is work and play, fear and hope, hunger and joy. It is weddings and funerals, Jewish life in a Roman-occupied land, religious questions, religious behavior, taxes, and work. “The world” is the whole teeming, toiling, sweating, laughing, crying, hungering, feasting, giving birth, dying arena of human existence. It is into the world that Christ was sent. It is into the world that we are sent.
Surely this implies caring, understanding, identifying with, serving, and seeking good for people as people, wherever they are found, in whatever circumstances they live.
This being said does not in the least imply that mere political, economic, physical liberation, or healing is the full and exclusive content of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Quite the opposite is true. The salvation offered in Christ is infinitely more than a reordering of the physical, economic, or political circumstances in which we find ourselves.
Consider two examples:
Here is a man who has experienced many tragedies in his life. Divorce and financial failure hit him simultaneously in the late 1960s. He lost his moral, spiritual, and social bearings. Fear, frustration, rage, anger at God, and anger at life marked him. Heavy drinking and frantic sexual activity filled his hours and days away from work. Then, through the ministry of Christian men who had themselves “been there,” he came into a new, right, and life-giving relationship with Christ. For more than five years now he has, with the grace of the Lord, been rebuilding his life and reclaiming his rightful place in the family of God and in the life of his community.
Consider a younger woman who, in the ’60s, went the hippie route, the drug scene, who fell for the evil notions of group sex, and finally became a small-time call girl in a mid-sized southern city. A chance and mutually embarrassing encounter with two high school classmates opened to her the thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something better. Again the miracle of conversion occurred and is continuing. She now finds life filled with meaning as she works with retarded children. She is at peace with herself and with her world. In a most literal sense she has experienced atonement. She is at-one with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
On the other hand we may affirm that abundant life in Jesus Christ includes the hope and possibility of salvation from this kind of dimunition of the Divine Image within us, as surely as it includes the hope and possibility of that deeper, inner reconciliation with God which is the effect of the saving work of Jesus Christ through faith and grace.
In Water Buffalo Theology Professor Koyoma has written of the enormous complexity of interpreting the Christian Gospel to men and women in the Orient. He initiated the concept of “water buffalo theology” to develop the theme that the words of the Gospel must be sounded in accents and acts clearly understandable as the very message of God Himself. We do not have to agree fully with the development of his theme to accept the validity of his basic insight. He is saying what Mable Shaw said earlier, in a highly poetic manner, as she spoke of the missionary posture. In Africa she suggests (and only because that was the continent of her own labors), that it involves “those who will kneel down in the midst of the people, and with faces almost to the ground, blow upon the embers, and heedless of the smoke and dust, blow until the flames leap up, and men and women and little children, made glad and free at home, gather round to warm their hands at the Fire of Life.”
So The Great Commission stands. Matthew 28:19-20 is unrevoked. But we read it better and we live it better in understanding that other form of The Great Commission: “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you” (John 17:18,21; 20:21).
