Truth Magazine

By Wayne S. Walker

In a recent sermon, I asked the congregation where I am a member if anyone could recall how many people had been baptized at Haynes St. so far that year? I told them not to answer out loud but to think about the question and try to answer in their minds throughout the sermon, through-out the day, and throughout the following week. I assume that it is the goal of every faithful congregation of God’s people, as well as every individual child of God, to see the Lord’s church grow both in spirit and in number. Of course, in order for numerical growth to occur, there must be conversions, people added to the Lord and his body through faith, repentance, and baptism.

But even before this will take place, Christians must grow spiritually to the point of seeing the need of working to save the lost and doing something about it. I would like for us to notice something that David wrote in Psalm 51:13. This is a psalm of repentance. But after he had made sure that his own life was in harmony with the Lord, he said, “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you.” The purpose of this article is to encourage us so that we will teach transgressors and sinners will be converted to Christ.

In one survey, large numbers were asked how they originally became interested in the church where they attended. The results were as follows:

21.1% were invited by friends & relatives

16.6% were visited by members of the church

7.6% were visited by leaders of the church

5.3% were children invited by friends

3.5% became interested through gospel meetings

29.6% were contacted by various other advertisements

Note that 50.6% came by personal contact and of that 43% was made by someone other than so-called “church leaders”  just “ordinary members.” This survey shows that personal work is our best means of converting people. Yet, it is perhaps the least relied on of any other means.

Also, the Los Angeles Executive Club published some extremely interesting facts about salesmen’s calls. Eight percent of all sales are made after the fifth call back. Yet48% of all salesmen make one call and quit, and 25% make three calls and quit. In other words, the great difference between selling and failing to sell lies in the number of calls! It is so hard to get some Christians to visit. It is even harder to get them to revisit. And yet, this revisiting insures success in both selling campaigns and church visitation.

There is no substitute for personal contact. It benefits both the caller and the person called on. We like people better and they like us better as we really get to know each other. By repeated visiting our understanding is increased. Being persistent is the road to success since very few will respond on the first call. So the answer is visit, visit, visit, and then visit again. Apparently, both selling and visiting are discouraging to many people. All salesmen would like to sell every product on the very first call. But remember that experience indicates that this will not be done. Again, 80% of those eventually sold will be sold after and not before the fifth visit. Are we willing to work this hard to save some lost soul?

But the question now becomes, what can we do to try to reach others? Not everyone has the same abilities and opportunities. Some can teach a home Bible study and others cannot. Some live in a neighborhood where people are willing to study and others live in areas where people will not even talk to them. However, somewhere, there is something that each person can do. So, in this article, we want to discuss some ways that we can win others for Jesus.

First, there are some things that we can do alone (Mark 16:15; James 5:20). Each Christian has a personal, individual responsibility to preach the gospel and seek to convert the sinner, regardless of what anyone else is doing. For example, we can use tracts. We might keep some in our car, purse, etc. to give whenever an occasion arises. Or we might keep some handy at the door to give to everyone who calls, especially religious workers like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Aldo, we might mail a carefully selected tract every so often to a particular group of friends. And we might leave them in barber or beauty shops, restaurants, laundromats, waiting rooms, terminals, or other places where reading material is provided for people. (Be sure that some name and address, either personal or congregational, is on the tract if a person reading it would want to make contact.)

Of course, as suggested earlier, we can and should visit  but whom to visit? We can visit new people in the neighborhood; acquaintances who are sick or in the hospital; someone we know bereaved by the loss of a loved one; a family with a new baby; a newly married couple; people who have lost possessions in a fire, storm, flood, or other tragedy; an elderly person who is lonely or shut-in; members who are weak or fallen away; and all visitors to the services of the church. Here would be a good place to add that every visitor who attends services should be given a visitor’s card to fill out so that his or her name and address will be available for follow-up. This is something else that each individual can do as a personal responsibility.

Another thing we can do is to use the telephone. We can make appointments to talk to people about the gospel or set up classes for others. I knew a lady who, after she was no longer able to attend services due to health, began calling her friends and asking to set up home Bible studies for the preacher and elders. A few were converted as a result of her efforts. We can invite people we know to regular services or gospel meetings. And we can call members who miss services and see if we can help in any way.

Then there are some other things that we can do as individuals. We can invite a friend or neighbor into our house to share a meal with us and then try to get a Bible discussion started. We can encourage new members by having them into our homes for a meal too (Mark 9:41). We can send a card with an appropriate message to those who are sick, are in hospitals, are newly married, have a new baby, have a birthday, have an anniversary, are shut in, or have some other special need or occasion. We can use tapes of sermons to share with others. And we can send a good gospel paper to friends or loved ones outside of Christ  e.g., With All Boldness, The Preceptor, Guardian of Truth, or Gospel Truths.

Secondly, there are things we can do with others (Luke 10:1-3). While there are some things that we can do all by ourselves. God never intended for us to do all our work by ourselves. We can take another Christian and go to a nursing home, hospital, retirement center, or jail to talk with people there. We can take another Christian and pass out gospel literature from door to door or to people on the street. We can take another Christian with us and visit prospects, visitors to the services, new Christians, weak and wayward members, and so forth. Or with another family in the church, we could invite a few couples who are not Christians to a get-together and try to start a Bible discussion.

Thirdly, there are things that we can do to promote the work of the church (1 Cor. 12:12-14; Eph. 4:15-16; 1 Tim. 3:15). We can call our friends’ attention to the activities of the church  radio or television programs, bulletins, Diala-Bible Message, home studies, filmstrips, gospel meetings, regular services, newspaper ads or articles, and correspondence courses. Some people just get several of the latter and start handing them out to people  good examples are the John Hurt, Sewell Hall, and Jule Miller course.

We can participate in a canvass of the community to take a religious survey that might produce new contacts by offering such services as correspondence courses, home studies, and filmstrips; or to pass out literature and announcements. If a person does not feel capable of teaching a home Bible study himself, he can start home Bible studies for the local preacher and other members who can teach them. We can ask our friends if they would like to see some filmstrips  e.g., the Jule Miller Cottage Meeting filmstrips, Winston Atkinson’s Fundamentals of the Faith film strips, and Neil Lightfoot’s How We Got the Bible film-strips. Some of these are now available on video cassette too. Or we just set up a regular class to study the Bible in a neighbor’s home. J.T. Bristow’s Knock on the Door, Ivan Stewart’s From House to House, and Homer Hailey’s Let’s Go Fishing for Men, all have excellent suggestions on how to do this. And we can have a Bible class in our own home, with a few members and selected non-member friends and neighbors attending.

Or we can give names of all new families in the neighborhood that we know of to be sent a packet containing information about the church. And we can issue invitations. We can invite people personally to attend regular services. It is good to put forth a special effort to do this at least once a week with one particular person in mind. We can especially invite everyone we know to come to our gospel meetings. And if necessary, we can use our cars to bring these people with us. Then once people are present, we can make a special effort to welcome warmly all visitors to our services. This is one area where most congregations probably need to be doing more. I know that it is difficult for mothers with small children, elderly, and others with special problems to get back and greet visitors, but each one of us needs to let our visitors know personally how much we appreciate their being with us. Through the years I have heard some people complain that there were not enough people at the door to greet visitors. Yet, while this is not always the case, usually the ones who complain the loudest are nowhere to be seen when visitors come thru the door.

And we can support heartily every soul-winning effort of the local congregation. We can teach in a vacation Bible school or other classes where we might instruct children in the truth and maybe open doors to lost parents. We can attend and encourage services in hospitals, nursing homes, jails, and so forth, conducted by the local church if it has any. We can participate in a personal work class or visitation program if the congregation has one. (Why is it that everyone agrees that we need to be doing more personal work, but when you announce a personal work class to help us get started and do it better, only a small few show up?) And whenever we see something that needs to be done, we can do it with all our might (Eccl. 9:10).

Finally, we must be genuinely converted, whole-heartedly dedicated, and enthusiastically zealous Christians. In Titus 2:11-14, Paul wrote of Christ, “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.” If this is true of each of us, then we should not have any trouble finding things to do. The fact is that we have been saved to save others.

In January, 1975, Sewell Hall wrote an article entitled “Seeking the Lost,” in which he made the following observations: “When conversions are few it is easy to blame our failures on the times, the hardness of heart among people of our community, or the opposition of adversaries. In some instances these are legitimate reasons for failure. Jesus and the apostles sometimes failed be-cause of indifference or hostility. The `Parable of the Sower’ describes a type of soil that is hard and cannot be penetrated with the seed of the kingdom. Paul also warns of a time when `men will not endure sound doctrine.’ These times appear to be now.

“But we cannot legitimately claim these as the reasons for our failures until we are sure we have given the people of our community every opportunity to hear and reject God’s truth. This is not accomplished by merely building a building and advertising. `Here it is; come get it!’ There are a hundred counterfeit offers of this kind for every sound one. How is the public to know the difference? Jesus said go! The responsibility is ours to see that they have the message brought to them personally.

“It was recently reported to me concerning an active and successful congregation, `The elders plan to succeed and if an effort fails, they examine it and make several changes before they will abandon it.’ No wonder this congregation is successful; they plan it that way. Other congregations expect to fail and they reach their expectations. Efforts are only half-hearted and when they bog down there is no particular disappointment . . . We can excuse ourselves by saying, `We have tried everything and nothing works.’

“If the same kind of thought, planning energy, and dedication were put into our efforts to save the lost that we put into promoting our business we would be successful … True, many congregations will never be aroused to their responsibility and potential. But . . . how many . . . things … can be done by individuals regardless of what the church does or does not do? There is no excuse! And if we love the Lord and the lost, why should we seek and excuse? Better to seek the lost” (Vanguard; Vol. 1, #2). What brother Hall wrote nearly twenty years ago is just as true today as it was then.

We have a choice to make, both as individual Christians and as congregations. We can sit around and do nothing, the result of which is that local churches will dwindle and eventually die, and we will be lost. Or we can all get to work doing the best that we can to seek and save the lost. And even though the church might end up not growing in spite of our efforts, we shall still please the Lord and can be saved. And ultimately, that is all we can do and that is all that he expects of us.

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 15, p. 8-10

August 4, 1994

By Donald Townsley

It is my conviction that there are several sins that are committed more frequently during the summer sea-son than at any other time of the year. In this article we will look at some of these sins.

Immodest Dress

The problem of immodest dress grows worse by the year! Dressing immodestly (by either women or men) is contrary to the law of Christ. Christians are not to be lascivious (Gal. 5:19). Lasciviousness is conduct that is shameless and shocking to public decency. Thayer says it means “unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, shamelessness, insolence.” W.E. Vine says it “denotes excess, licentiousness, absence of restraint, indecency, wantonness.” Clark says it means “all lewdness.” These definitions show that a Christian must always show restraint in conduct, be de-cent in dress, and never be lewd in any sense.

The definitions above would rule out the wearing of skin-tight jeans or pants on the part of male or female; the wearing of shorts; dresses that are cut too low, too short, or too tight, and dresses that have a slit which shows the leg half-way up the thigh (giving a “strip-tease” view of the leg which is very sensual and lust-enticing to the male). Paul said to the women: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, pearls, or costly array; but (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works” (1 Tim. 2:9-10). Paul told the older women to teach the younger women “to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Tit. 2:5).

The nakedness of a woman’s body excites lust in men. From his roof-top David saw Bathsheba washing herself and she was “very beautiful to look upon” (2 Sam. 11:2). David looked, lusted, then sent for her and committed the overt act of adultery with her (2 Sam. 11:4). The same thing happens over and over today: women ex-pose their nearly nude bodies to neighbors and friends of the opposite sex; lust is kindled, then it is not over until that neighbor or friend “goeth in to his neighbor’s wife” (Prov. 6:32-35)! Trust is destroyed! Hearts and homes are broken! And it all began with a woman indecently exposing her-self!

A woman who displays her body before men, or conducts her-self in such a way that she causes them to lust has become a stumbling-block (Matt. 18:6-7). No godly woman is going to be displaying her nude (or nearly nude) body before the eyes of a lustful world which has “eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin” (2 Pet. 2:14). A godly woman knows what is modest (in apparel and in conduct) and lives accordingly. She also teaches her children and sets the proper example of modesty before them. The writer of Proverbs said of the evil woman, “Lust not after her beauty in thine heart” (Prov. 6:25). Jesus said that “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).

Mixed Swimming

Mixed swimming is another summer sin that falls in the same category as that discussed above. True Christians will not expose their bodies to one another and to the people of the world by going to the public swimming pools and beaches. There is also physical contact involved in mixed swimming that is lust-enticing, Christians are to abstain from every form of evil (1 Thess. 5:22).

Godless Vacations

Many Christians not only take a vacation from work, they also take a vacation from God, Christ and the church! Many rob God in order to take their vacations  some drastically reduce their contribution, and others just eliminate it altogether! We all need to understand that the Lord’s work must go on: vacation or no vacation, duty to God must come first! Then, many go to places where there is no church. They have given no thought as to where they will worship on the Lord’s day (Acts 20:7; Heb. 10:25)! What if the Lord should come during this time when you have given no thought to ensure that his work goes on at home, and have made no preparation to worship him while you are away from home?

We all need to learn that Christianity is not a seasonal religion, nor is it circumstantial in nature. The practice of Christianity does not depend upon place  we must be Christians wherever we are; neither does the practice of Christianity depend on time  we are to be Christians regardless of the day or the hour! The “seasonal Christian” is good at church services and in the presence of the brethren, but many times he becomes a reprobate when he gets away from the brethren and the preacher and goes on vacation! He seems to forget that God sees him all of the time (Heb. 4:13). Brethren, we must be true Christians, in every sense of the word, in order to be pleasing to God.

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 15, p. 1
August 4, 1994

By Isaac Errett

Far more widespread is the mischief arising from the intensely secular spirit of the age. The second mentioned evil is one that is realized by thinkers and students; but the mass of people do not think or study closely on these subjects. Without much thought or study they drink in the spirit of the age, which is grossly material and worldly. It is an age of material interests. Even science is subsidized by materialism, and has its chief value in ministering to the advancement of material interests. Education no longer proposes intellectual and moral enlargement and elevation as an end. Its end now is to fit us for the successful pursuit of wealth. Money is more than intellect, and intellect more than heart, these days. We are willing to wear the long ears of Midas, if only everything we touch may turn to gold. This insane thirst for riches, and the absorbing interest in the worldly pursuits which it necessarily engenders, puts every spiritual interest in peril. Not only are the devotees of wealth impervious to all at-tacks made by the gospel on heart and conscience, but the church is unnerved for the at-tack that ought to be made. This secular spirit is eating up the piety of heart and home and church. The closet is forsaken; the family altar crumbles. The Bible is no longer the book of the household. The daily papers, saturated with worldliness and reeking with vice and crime, and the weekly or monthly journal of literature and fashion, utterly Christless, if not positively infidel in its tendencies, form the reading of the family. Beyond this, if books are read, they are apt to be frothy fictions, written to minister to sentimentalism, and leaving the reader with hot blood and prurient desires. Our children go from these almost godless homes to secular schools, from which everything moral and religious is being most diligently rooted out, in obedience to the atheistic demands of a foreign population, who are not con-tent to enjoy in this land the liberty which Christianity has given them, but seek to establish in our country the same atheistic principles that have already sapped the foundations of morals in Europe, and made France the helpless, pitiable spectacle she is today. And our churches are invaded by the same secular spirit. The simplicity and spirituality of the church of God are sacrificed to pride and fashion. The crashing thunders of truth against all sin and wrong are exchanged for dulcet notes of rhetorical elegance, or for the sky-rockets of a sensational oratory. A false and hollow liberalism succeeds to the stern old bigotry that used to reign in the pulpit. Very short prayers and ten-minute sermons are the rage now. For the rest, the house of God must be made a place of refined amusement, so as to draw. Either delicious music or startling oratory must be had to draw. And when our children go from such homes into such schools, and from such schools into such churches, what sort of a generation are we training for the work of God? I tremble when I think of it. I am no foe to refinement or to oratory, and certainly no advocate of boorishness or of Ishmaelitish aggressiveness in the pulpit; but I would a thousand times rather see our pulpits filled with hairy Elijahs that could call down fire from heaven and send terror and slaughter among the foes of Israel, than with the most accomplished trimmers and slaves of the hour.

It is this worldliness, so wide-spread and so insinuating, that more than anything else paralyzes our missionary efforts. We are so intoxicated with the spirit of the times that we can not be brought to sympathize with a world that is rushing down to death. And we grow so selfish and ambitious in the midst of our earthly prosperities that we have no heart to give as we ought to give to the missionary work. There is ever an increasing selfishness, attending our growth in wealth, which very few escape. We have less sympathy with the world, and more anxiety for our own interests. And this operates in regard to our religious giving as in all other things. We lose our sympathy with the world of mankind. We learn to sneer at Foreign Missions, and figure on it to ascertain how much it costs to convert a soul in Africa or in India.

(Quoted from “Opportunity and Opposition,” New Testament Christianity I:76-79).

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 15, p. 5
August 4, 1994

By Tim Mize

I see that “the Jesus Seminar” has made the news again. As you may know, this seminar is actually a group of 78 biblical scholars (read: “professors of religion at various liberal seminaries and secular universities”) who have set out to uncover the true Jesus, especially the things that the true Jesus said. This they thought to do by first pulling up every saying of Jesus that they could find, and throwing them all into a big mix. Then they could meet to pull out each piece one at a time and argue about whether it is something that Jesus actually said.

According to the news, they have finally finished. As it turns out, the purpose of all this labor was the publication of a book, now available for your purchase, called The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? Now all we modern, progressive people out here in the public have something to buy that will give us the very trendiest education on the subject.

Lucky for us, we are now let in on the truth about Jesus. They alone were able to attain to these things, up there in their ivory towers, but they have looked down on us with compassion. As they tell it, things had gotten so bad, with all those “fundamentalists” and “literalists” and “televangelists” about to take control of our religious life, as to require them to sell us this volume. We all know what a genuine threat that is, especially among the sort of people who would be buying it.

A Fifth Gospel

They call it The Five Gospels. They speak of five Gospels because, falling in with the latest scholarly fad, they have put a work called “The Gospel of Thomas” alongside (actually, above) the four Gospels of the Bible. It would be better, though, to entitle it The Fifth Gospel, for a fifth Gospel is exactly what they are trying to create. They have found fault with our four biblical Gospels and have taken upon themselves, at this late date, to construct a better one. This fifth, supplanting Gospel they like to refer to as “the historical Jesus.”

This sort of thing is nothing new. An element of religious intellectuals has been trying to do this on and off for two centuries now, with widely varying results. Just lately, we’ve been subjected to a spate of these “historical Jesus” books (I saw a cartoon the other day of a preacher getting an offer to join “the Historical Jesus of the Month Club”).

A prominent member of the Jesus Seminar named John Dominic Crossan has written the most recent thorough-going one. It is called The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. The cover bills it as “the first comprehensive determination of who Jesus was, what he did, what he said.” They could have billed it better as “the latest of a 200-year long string of books that try to rescue the real Jesus from the Bible.”

Now don’t mistake me. There is much to be gained by viewing Jesus or the Bible through the historian’s eye. The truth has nothing to fear from any honest investigation.

In fact, I have read Prof. Crossan’s book. He has some very helpful information about the socio-economic, political and religious setting in which the story of Christ was played out. But I find myself unimpressed when somebody sets out to explain Jesus entirely from this “background” information  laboriously dug out, as it happens, in some professor’s office at such-and-such university  while casting aside the Lord’s disciples’ own testimony to him. And I find myself a bit suspicious when after it’s all sweated out and written down Jesus comes out looking a little too much like a twentieth century egalitarian activist liberal.

Unreasonable Skepticism

Whenever you hear about the Jesus Seminar or see books like Crossan’s, understand where these people are coming from and what they are up to. Their work is ruled by several tired old assumptions that have circulated for years within the liberal academic community.

The main one is this: “The Gospels are not `historical reports’ about Jesus; they are the professions of early Christians of what they believed about Jesus.” Now, there is some truth to that statement, but it goes on from there to this: “Therefore, nothing they reported about Jesus can be trusted just as it stands.” If it is found in the Bible, it is just “faith” and not “history.” Such skepticism is excessive and uncalled for.

Their notion is that the early church could have invented and probably did invent a great part of what is written about Jesus. Never mind the short time between the life of Christ and the composition of the Gospels; never mind the scandalous offensiveness of what they believed and pro-claimed; never mind that the people who preached and believed these things gave their all and even their lives for them  most any bit of it could have been and probably was the product of somebody’s pious creative imagination. The bottom line is, that if you are going to say that anything told in the Gospels actually happened, then you’re going to have to prove it.

This “proving” was what the Jesus Seminar and Crossan in his book were up to. It was demanded of each story or saying of Jesus that it be proved that it actually happened. We’ll not go into what they thought of as “proof,” but this was the approach: If a lot of proof could be found, then it most likely happened. If only some proof could be found, then maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t. If there is no proof available, then it never happened.

At the roots of all this lie an outright rejection of the apostolic testimony to Jesus  that he was the Christ, the incarnate Son, who arose from the dead and truly lives on. If you are open to that, then there is nothing implausible in the Gospels. If you rule that out from the start, though, then every other thing in the Gospels will be baffling or incredible to you.

Surely it is unreasonable to rule out what the Gospels are trying to show you before you even go through them. But this is what they’ve done. Nothing else explains their excessive skepticism.

Finding Jesus or Dodging Jesus?

In all fairness, these scholars do believe that they are helping the faith. They see themselves as offering a purified Christianity to a modern, secular culture that can no longer accept Christ as the Bible gives him. The enlightened, less credulous intellect of today cannot believe what those premodern evangelists wrote about Jesus, nor should they be expected to. Fortunately, we can see now that those early Christians presented Jesus creatively, in order to make a case for him that would be persuasive within their particular cultural setting. That case, as it turns out, is no longer persuasive in our cultural setting, but not to fear  we can do as they did, and once again present a Jesus that is persuasive and relevant to our times.

What they actually do, however, is provide our ever more secularized, humanistic world just what it is looking for  an educated alternative to the scandalous Christ of orthodox, biblical faith (with a clever put down of those embarrassing “literalists” and “fundamentalists” who faith-fully expose its sins thrown in besides). Jesus cannot be ignored, but he can be reduced to something more manage-able to the mind, more edifying to the self-esteem, less disruptive to the lifestyle. This reduced Jesus is just what they’ve been handed, and by the “liberal Christian community” at that. It is no surprise that those who have drunk most deeply of the spirit of our age so quickly welcome and recommend books such as these.

It is wrong to assume that the Christ of the Gospels was any less offensive to his premodern, original audience than he is to our contemporary, modern one. Christ has always been offensive just as he stands. The fact of his crucifixion demonstrates that beyond words. The original Christians were at peace with this offensiveness. After all, they went all over the world preaching an accursed Messiah and a crucified God-incarnate. In the face of that, there was little that they could do to “doctor up” Jesus to make him easier to swallow, and we can be sure that they were not inclined to do so. We cannot say the same, however, of our modern enlightened “Jesus scholars.”

Truly, it is arrogant and perverse to stand ourselves and our culture over the Bible and think that we must bring it up to our level. It is for us to stand ourselves and our world under the Bible so as to be challenged by it, and to be all of us brought up to it. We will never truly understand the Bible, and that includes the Jesus whom it preaches, unless we are willing to stand under it.

It all comes down to an elaborate dodging of the offensiveness of Christ, and getting around confronting him just as the apostles and the early church preached him. The Bible doesn’t ask you to “check your brains in at the door” and hear it like a gullible fool, but it does ask you to face its message squarely as it stands. One way that people deflect the challenge that is put to them by the text  especially the challenge as to who Christ is  is to turn the tables and make the text be challenged instead. It’s as if one would say to it, “I will challenge you first; I will make you prove yourself.” I like what Thomas Oden said in his book The Word of Life:

One can sit comfortably in an easy chair and ask historical questions without any commitment or moral response. With the historian’s hat on, one can play at the puzzle of trying to understand the sequence of events by which Jesus came to be called Christ, the Son of God. It is possible to raise fine and intriguing historical questions without ever being required to make any personal decision about them.

The irony is that when we meet the Jesus of the text, he is constantly calling us to a decision about him (p. 206).

Mr. Oden, by the way, is a former liberal who knows just what it means to play at the arm chair historicism of which he speaks.

Back to the Bible

We don’t need somebody in some ivory tower to mediate Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity to us. We are able to understand the Bible without them, if we are willing to stand under it and hear it openly, letting its challenge be continually met and humbly answered. Nor do we need to mediate the Lord to the world by passing him through the filter of cultural standards and beliefs. Let them meet him just as he stands.

The Five Gospels now takes its place alongside all the other “historical Jesus” books that have come down the pike. Like the others, it will wind up a museum piece, exemplifying the secular age it tried to impress. But the word of God, “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword,” will endure forever (Heb. 4:12; 1 Pet. 1:24-25).

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 15, p. 6-7
August 4, 1994