Truth Magazine

By Kathleen M. Berendt

Why is it so, that when you hear the young people of the church tell you what they want to do with their lives, one seldom hears, “I want to be a preacher,” or “I’d like to be a preacher’s wife”? As I’ve asked repeatedly, the usual answer, heard time and time again, is, “But a preacher’s life is so poor; so hard; it’s just. . .”

Could it be that our children have received such “negative press” from us as parents, that this “career choice” is simply out of the question? Or could it be, that what they see brethren put the preacher and his family through just isn’t for them. Could we not make the life of a preacher and his family more appetizing or appealing? For that matter, maybe preachers and their families need to examine how they’re coming across to the young people.

It sounds to me, like I’m living “the impossible lifestyle,” yet I live it each day. These are things I have heard brethren comment on — could this be you? “It takes a certain kind of woman to be a preacher’s wife.” When asked, “What kind?” the answer comes back, “One who can live in a fishbowl. . . Have no private lifestyle. . . Raises perfect children. . . Always studies the Bible. . . Caring for the needs of everybody in the church. . . Never having a perm-anent dwelling place, or owning their own home. . . Never going on ‘big’ vacations. . . You’re never to have anything of ‘real’ material value. . . Can’t drive a nice, new, expensive (red) car. . . Entertains constantly, always ‘at the drop of a hat’. . . hardly can afford to get sick. . . The list goes ‘on and on.”‘ But the very top of “the list” is always the same one, “Preachers don’t make good money; they have to live such a rough life.”

Why is this? I’ve actually heard some brethren say to preachers, “You’ve given up all the fine things that life has to offer, when you ‘went into’ preaching.” Being raised in the Catholic Church, I realize that nuns and priests have to take a “vow of poverty,” but so far, I haven’t come across this stipulation in the word of the Lord, nor the “job description” of a gospel preacher. Some make the life of a preacher look so hard and horrible, no one would dare volunteer to such an undertaking. Even preacher’s children are heard to remark, “I sure don’t want to be a preacher (like my daddy); it’s too hard.”

Putting the Lord “number one” in our lives, is to be the task of all his children (Matt. 6:33; 1 Cor. 15:58). Attending all the worship services is mandatory for all who truly love him (Heb. 10:22-25; Jas. 4:17; Psa. 110:3), as well as being prepared and ready for Bible classes, and studying the word of God (Acts 17:11; Jn. 5:38-40). Being kind, caring, and considerate to all others (the sick, elderly, downtrodden, weak and otherwise needy) is enjoined upon all disciples of the Christ (Rom. 12:9-16; Matt. 25:31-46; Jas. 1:21-27). Also, being hospitable to one another, is a widespread requirement (Heb. 13:1-2; 1 Pet. 4:8-9). The pursuit of worldly gain and wisdom is forbidden (Rom. 12:1-2; Col. 3:1-15). And finally, living a life without sufficient income is also for all of us. . . Oops — there’s the stopper! It really isn’t for all of us after all, or is it? Is this the ultimate hardship?

God has promised to care for all of our needs, provided we trust in him (Matt. 10:28-33, 6:19-34; Phil. 4:4-9; 1 Pet. 5:5-7). With that thought, I’ll say this: A preacher’s salary is “ordained” by the Lord, but decided upon, by the brethren (1 Cor. 9:3-14). If a preacher’s lifestyle is so hard, it probably is because the brethren believe it must be so, not our Lord (Gal. 6:6-7; 1 Tim. 5:18). The Lord especially wants the hardest of his workers to be cared for. If preachers and their families can’t be provided for, the way the rest of God’s children would like to be, something is seriously wrong. All of the brethren have their needs, but it never ceases to amaze me, how the preacher’s needs are measured by a “different” standard. Some preachers don’t even have insurance, or if they do, it’s such poor quality, that his family waits until they’re practically on their death bed before they see a doctor! An eye doctor, dentist, or orthodontist is a luxury which many preachers’ dependents rarely see. When vacation time comes around, too often the difference in the brethren and the preacher’s income is seen. As the family struggles to make their month-to-month “regular” bills, often getting a bit behind on their budget, that finding sufficient cash even for gas money is a difficult task. Grandma and grandpa seem so very far away at such times. A “worn out” preacher is seen, along with his tired family, who are barely able to get away, to visit their relatives. Of course, this type of visit is wonderful, but not always very restful, especially when you travel through the night, with the family sleeping in the car, for lack of funds for a motel.

If brethren are “early risers,” they expect their preacher and his family to rise early even though his work may have caused them to stay up late. What is often found, is that usually a preacher and family are both early risers and late nighters.

If the preacher decides to take one day off, out of a seven day work load (as did his Lord) and he doesn’t get away from home, his “day off” can easily become a full day’s work, including late night hours. It only takes a few calls from brethren to fill a “lazy” preacher’s daily schedule.

A church with any amount of members, considering all the different needs of each person with all the preacher and his family must do to please each of them, could leave a preacher and his family in an endless battle of no private lifestyle. “No rest for the weary!” A preacher has to protect his family and himself, making choices as to what they will and will not do, to make sure they have a good family lifestyle. This includes spirituality, eating, work, fun, and resting; preferably done together (as in — “a family unit”). Too often they find time for only one.

If it sounds like a “hard life” — it is, or at least it can be at times. These hardships, of course, are not limited to preachers and their families, as everyone who is diligent and active, doing the Lord’s work will find themselves with plenty to do at all times. But you simply live it each day — and pray to the Lord, turning to him for the strength and energy to make it each day (Phil. 4:13). For he is the pillar of all families who diligently serve him daily, the world over.

But my main concern is this — I am rather young myself, and already I ask this question (usually of myself, and my God), “Who is going to take my husband’s and my place, in the service of the Lord, when we are gone off this earth?”

“Who will live this hard life?”

Let us pray together, brethren, on these matters. I believe it is a great concern of the Lord and should be to his children as well. I thank the Lord each day for providing me with the strength to serve him. That such a worm as I can be enabled to do his work on earth, but through “the foolishness of preaching,” he chose to get his word out. We all need to live “the hard life” — for him. To quote a wise man, I love dearly, “His people may (at times) not seem to be worth it — but our Holy Father always is!” And that is why we live the hard life!

Guardian of Truth XXXVII: 2, p. 8
January 21, 1993

By Johnie Edwards

A cigarette commercial sells its tobacco on the theme, “You Have Come a long way baby.” It might be more rightly said, “We have got a long way to go.” Let’s take a look at some areas in which we have a long way to go:

 

In Our Attitude Toward Sin

Most people have white-washed sin to the degree that few know what sin really is and what it will do. Sin is still sin and does what it has always done. Sin separates us from God. Isaiah said, “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2). This passage says that sin:

1. Separates us from God. God cannot stand sin and he will not allow us to be near him as long as we sin.

2. Causes God to hide his face from such. Peter said, “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil” (1 Pet. 3:12).

3. God will not listen when we pray. Try as hard as you may, if you are not willing to quit your sinning, God will not hear when you pray.

All forms of sin are tolerated in a lot of churches of Christ and no one says a thing about it. A lot of churches are so worldly that you can hardly tell the difference between them and the world! The wages of sin are the same as they have always been. “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).

In the Upbringing of Our Children

“The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Prov. 29:15). Many of our children are being left to themselves to do as they please when they get ready. The rod and reproof have been left off and wisdom goes lacking! Most parents are too busy and thus spend so little time with their children, they do not know what they need in regards to discipline.

A lot of parents are more interested in things than in their own children. Parents are commanded to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6). Fathers are instructed, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). The wise man said, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). As parents, we just need to apply the rod in the proper places. We cannot wait until the child is half-grown to begin this correction, but it must start at a very early age.

Too many parents give their children too many things. Young people these days grow up with everything they want and have nothing to look forward to in later years. With the free sex life most young people are encouraged to live, I don’t even see why they bother with the “honey-moon” when they get married! We have a long way to go in teaching our children.

Most of our schools are filled with drugs, alcohol, guns and sex with hardly any discipline. There was a time when a child got a whipping at home if he got one at school. To-day, if a child gets a whipping at school, the child and his father go to the school and whip the teacher! We have got a long way to go in regards to discipline!

With Regards to Respect for Authority

So few have so little respect for authority that you might think there is no authority anymore! A lot of people have no respect for themselves, anybody, or anything. Kids talk back to their parents. Those in places of authority are not respected or feared, not even God! Young people are commanded to “honor thy father and mother” (Eph. 6:2). It must be realized that Christ has “all authority in heaven and in earth” (Mt. 28:18). A lot of churches of Christ have a long way to go to get back to respecting what Christ has to say. He is “the head of the body, the church” (Eph. 1:22-23). The church must come a long way back, in some places, and realize that “the church is subject unto Christ” (Eph. 5:24).

When more than 4000 churches send funds to a sponsoring church to try to evangelize the whole world, as with the One Nation Under God project, we have got a long way to go! We have to go back to the example of the church at Philippi as they “sent once and again unto my necessity” (Phil. 4:16). Paul said, as he preached the gospel in Thessalonica. They sent directly to the preacher in the field of work and not through a sponsoring church with elders who were not satisfied to just “tend the flock of God among them” (1 Pet. 5:2). We have come a long way from this old pattern of evangelism.

There is a great demand for all of us to “fear God” (Eccl. 12:13; Acts 10:34-35). As was said in Jeremiah’s day, it can be said today in a lot of places, “my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts” (Jer. 2:19).

In Being Faithful

I am not convinced that many really know what faithfulness is all about. John’s statement about being faithful is a summary of all the child of God is taught to do. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). Paul told the Corinthians, “Morever it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2). We have got a long way to go in being faithful. These early Christians were being threatened with death itself and in the face of being burned at the stake, they were encouraged to just hold out and be faithful, even to the giving of your own life.

A lot of church members think they are faithful when they attend on Sunday morning, eat the Lord’s Supper, give a few dollars and live as they please during the week! Being a Christian and going to heaven is a daily affair. We are taught to be “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). And, until we do this, we have got a long way to go!

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 1, p. 18
January 7, 1993

By Kenneth D. Sits

It appears the debate about abortion in America is over. Recently, America spoke in the national election and various state elections to continue the practice of abortion. Abortion may be defined as: the wanton destruction and elimination of: (1) viable tissue mass or (2) a baby in the womb of a: (1) woman or (2) mother. Regardless of what people may say, abortion is the wanton destruction and elimination of a baby in the womb of a mother. Since 1973, America has witnessed the killing of 1.5 million babies a year within the wombs of their mothers. That calculates to 30 million babies by the end of this year which is approximately 1/10 of our current population in the United States. The trumpet sound of the “modern person” now boldly and assertively blows that this practice of pre-meditated murder and slaughter is what we want in our society. For them, it is a great day of victory for the “rights” of women across the land.

Many groups proudly display their legislative victory as a woman’s “right” to choose. I can remember reading about a woman’s “right” to choose in the Bible. The very first woman had a “right” to choose in Genesis chapter 3. It was there that Eve recalls God’s command for her not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, Satan told her that she had a “right” to that tree. Satan said in Genesis 3:4, “You shall not surely die. For God knows in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” There is no doubt, Eve had a choice. It was up to her. Would she obey her Creator, or eat the fruit she truly wanted to eat? She exercised her “right” to choose and disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. The story in Genesis goes on to tell us that the results of Eve’s choice brought heartache, pain and suffering. She had a “right” to choose, but it surely wasn’t the right choice.

Our country has made it legal for women, without regard to the father, to slaughter a child in her womb. It is her choice to exercise legally, but it isn’t a choice without consequences. Consider some of the consequences of this “right” to choose to have an abortion.

The same God who created and punished Eve has spoken to people concerning his hatred of the shedding of innocent blood (Prov. 6:17). Man would like to tell you that this “tissue mass” is not a human being, but God, in the Bible, completely contradicts this idea. In Ecclesiastes 11:5 the wise preacher says, “As you do not know what is the way of the wind, or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child.” God calls the fetal mass within a woman’s womb a child. In Luke 1:44, the Scriptures tells us that “the babe (brephos) leaped in the womb for joy.” Clearly God has taught us that a babe becomes a babe at its creation which can only be fertilization. Isaiah said this in Isaiah 49:1, “The Lord has called me from the womb; from the matrix of my mother he has made mention of my name.” God called Jeremiah in a similar fashion in Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; and I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” When a woman exercises her legal right to “choose” to abort her “viable tissue mass,” she is actually choosing to murder a child in her womb!

We are beginning to be exposed to a great deal of data from emotionally shattered women who exercised their “right” to choose. There are many, many women who have come out of the closet confessing various kinds of emotional distress a past abortion has done to their lives. Some women have committed suicide. Some will never be able to forgive themselves. Some have divorced their mates and left their other children. On the positive side, some have turned into the most ardent campaigners and champions of the “pro-life” movement. Why do women continue to have these types of reactions if they were just removing an inconvenient, unwanted growth? They knew conscientiously, and later knew biblically, that they destroyed a life which God created. They were beginning to feel the impact of Eve’s con-sequences for their “right” to choose.

What is the bottom line to the modern holocaust of abortion? It is the ancient battle of Satan verses God. It’s the battle of big money verses God’s righteousness. It’s the battle of self-seeking verses sacrifice. It’s the battle of good verses evil. It’s the battle of our personal choices verses what God wants me to do. Sadly, it appears that truth and righteousness are losing.

One must have his head buried in the sand not to notice that the sin of abortion is destroying the moral fabric of our society. Abortion’s overt wickedness is affecting the minds of our next generation by encouraging them to pro-mote self-seeking and self-proclaimed “rights” the constitution and God never extended to Americans. Abortion is even affecting those who would call themselves Christians. There are several denominations who have officially taken pro-abortion stands such as the: Episcopal, United Methodist, United Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ and United Churches of Christ. Today, there are members of the blood bought body of Christ, the church of Christ, who are “closet believers” in a woman’s “right” to an abortion. There are disciples of Christ among us who have had no conscientious problem in voting and electing people who have advocated a pro-abortion stance in our last election! Consider what God said in Romans 1:32, “Who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” Brethren, we need to repent and pray God if we have knowingly supported one who publicly advocates a pro-abortion stance! Where is our love for the truth of God gospel?

Since God is the Creator of life, he is the only one who has the right to destroy life. God has decreed to extend this authority to the government to bear his sword on the evil doer (Rom. 13). This godly principle known as “capital punishment” continues to be fought against by the same people who demand their “right” to bear the sword on the innocent babe in the womb. God will not be long in his punishment. In Revelation 21:7-8 God has said, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” Abortion often results from sexual immorality and tries to cover up lies, idolatry (covetousness), cowardly action and other abominations. The act of abortion is one of the ultimate acts of unbelief. How can Christians be even remotely connected or endorsing such a heinous action?

Brethren, we must be prepared. The time seems to be drawing near that our cries to end abortion in America will no longer be an acceptable protest against this abomination. In the future, we may all be challenged to state our views and we may have to publicly suffer for speaking the truth of God’s word on this subject. Are you prepared to stand up as a soldier of the cross and accept persecution for the truth? Abortion is a sin against God and humanity. No amount of legislation can change the truth of God or make a wrong a “right.” Choose to accept God and our forefathers’ plea for “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

Guardian of Truth XXXVII: 2, p. 3
January 21, 1993

By Dan King

Those students of the Bible who have drunk deeply at the wells of modernism have been affected in most every area of their study. The conclusions which they draw are slanted away from any literal application of scriptural texts which touch upon such subjects as the miraculous, the unseen realms, angels and demons, inspirational and prophetical activities of God — in short, most every theme which makes the Bible a unique production of the Holy Spirit. The biblical doctrines of heaven and hell, found as they are in quite literal contexts, are not subject to any approach which would spiritualize them away. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have attempted this with hell, but do not use the same or comparable logic with heaven. The effect of modernism is to rationalize them away, seeing them in terms of ancient mythopoeic thought.

Modernists neutralize both biblical notions, describing them as part of the mythic world of the ancients. Believing, as they do, that the writers of the Bible lived in societies which were backward and pre-scientific in their perspective upon all aspects of life, they imbibed these viewpoints, even though they were filled with folklore, legend and common myth. The result is that they produced a literature which was characterized by belief in such. The biblical books are representative of the larger body of that literature, differing from it only in that these works were the “survivors.”

Genesis and Creation Myth

It has long been held by liberal scholars that the creation narrative of Genesis chapters one and two is heavily dependent upon ancient Babylonian myth. In the middle of the last century archaeologists unearthed Assyrian copies of the Old Babylonian creation and flood stories at Nineveh in the library of Ashurbanipal (669-633 B.C.), the last great king of the Assyrian empire. In 1876 George Smith, a young Assyriologist at the British Museum, published his epoch-making book The Babylonian Account of Genesis, which recounted the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma elish (named after its opening words: “When on high . . .”). At first liberal scholars were tempted to think that practically everything in the Old Testament was borrowed from Babylon. Hugo Winckler became father to the theory called the “pan-Babylonian” view of biblical origins. His books Geschichte Israels (Vol. 1, 1895) and Das alte Westasien (1899) precipitated the “Bible vs. Babel” controversy, when Friedrich Delitzsch took his viewpoint to the ultimate extreme in Babel and Bibel (1902). Delitzsch attempted to show that there was nothing in the Old Testament that was not but a pale reflection of Babylonian ideas.

Hermann Gunkel, who authored Shopfung and Chaos in Urzeit and Endzeit (“Creation and Chaos in Beginning-time and End-time,” 1985), was one of the first to assess this mythological tradition upon the Bible. From a “history of religions” viewpoint, Gunkel argued that the Babylonian creation myth concerning Marduk’s victorious combat against the dragon Tiamat and her chaotic allies had tremendous influence upon the writers of Scripture. And, although his approach has since been refined by subsequent scholars, Bernhard W. Anderson in his book Creation versus Chaos, still posits that the Babylonian story is at the root of the entire ancient near eastern tradition which became the source for the Bible narrative. All he adds, in terms of approach, is a discussion of the mythological texts from Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) dating from about 1400 B.C., wherein Baal, the stormgod of old Canaan battles, Yam the god of the sea, and Nahar the god of the River. He, like many other modern liberal scholars, sees Canaanite religion as the bridge through which these notions were mediated to ancient Israel.

Despite the fact that scholars have often demonstrated the glaring differences between the creation story as told in Genesis and that in the Babylonian epic, and how strained are the similarities, this position continues to be put forward as the correct one. K.A. Kitchen writes: “Assyriological scholarship has by now largely rejected the old idea that Genesis 1-2 had any close relation at all with Enuma elish. Such is essentially the verdict of Heidel, Kinnier-Wilson, Lambert, and Millard, for example. Writers on the Old Testament who suggest the contrary are out of date” (The Bible in its World 27).

Biblical Cosmology

Perhaps more to the point, the idea of cosmology as taught in the Bible has come under fire as one aspect of modernism’s assault on scriptural concepts. Heaven and hell are viewed as aspects of a “three-storied universe” which went out of vogue conceptually with the beginning of the scientific era. The old notion is seen as having been a part of the fabric of ancient thought about the world. One scholar articulates it this way:

“By 3000 B.C., Sumerian culture in lower Mesopotamia had already worked out, it seems, a view of the universe which was to endure with only minor modifications for over 2000 years. The three fold division of the universe with which we are familiar from the Bible is found in Sumerian culture. Heaven, consisting of various regions, is the abode of the gods. The earth, conceived of as a disk, and the underworld complete the divisions of the universe. The primeval waters are located both above the vault of heaven and below the earth. The upper and lower seas (the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf) represent the limits of the earth. The vault of heaven rests upon the outermost bounds of the earth, thus enclosing man in an earth which is protected from destruction by the firm underside of heaven and by the under-earth mountains which support the disc-earth over the lower primeval waters. This cosmological picture is precisely that found in the Old Testament (Walter Harrelson, The Significance of Cosmology in the Ancient Near East 257; also in From Fertility Cult to Worship 2).

In order to make the Old Testament fit this scenario, modernist scholars must do two things. First, they find it necessary to literalize highly figurative expressions from the book of Psalms and elsewhere. Terms like “waters above the firmament” are taken for seas that existed above the sky, rather than the sources of rain in the clouds; “storehouses of snows,” “storehouses of hail,” and “chambers of the winds” are taken literally — even though we might ourselves use such language today in a figurative sense. “Waters under the earth” are viewed as underground rivers of the nether world, instead of the waters of the ocean (which are indeed below the land). Heaven and hell are seen as mere hold overs in this ancient way of seeing the universe. Modern scientific man should not take them seriously, for they are pre-critical in their origin.

The second thing many scholars do is to ignore the general tendency of the Old Testament to strike out beyond the mythic approach to the world as taken by Israel’s neighbors, and even to attack many of their ideas directly. In a most helpful chapter in the book Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, called “The Emancipation of Thought From Myth” the authors (H. and H. A. Frankfort) suggest that Israel broke from the mythic traditions of the ancient world: “The God of the psalmists and the prophets was not in nature. He transcended nature — and transcended, likewise, the realm of mythopoeic thought. It would seem that the Hebrews, no less than the Greeks, broke with the mode of speculation which had prevailed up to their time” (237).

Probably the most outrageous statement of this belief, as it applies to the New Testament, came from the pen of Rudolf Bultmann in his essay New Testament and Mythology: “The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. . . Supernatural forces intervene in the course of nature. . . Miracles are by no means rare.” Bultmann did not conceal his general skepticism, suggesting that the New Testament needed to be “demythologized” in order to be rescued from this pre-scientific thinking. Bultmann’s favorite teacher was the avowed atheist Heidegger who applauded Bultmann for “making theology out of my philosophy” (quoted in Carl F.H. Henry, Frontiers in Modern Theology 19). Although much of his methodology has gone by the wayside as newer scholars and schools of thought have taken his place, yet there is still a skepticism on the part of liberal scholars as to the existence of the unseen realm.

A Kinder, Gentler Doctrine

Finally, the liberal approach to heaven and hell has been affected by the tendency among liberal scholars to make Christian doctrine “nice” and “clean it up” so that it is more acceptable to the modern mind. Of course, the modern mind tends to be much more hostile to the notion of punishment, especially if it is considered harsh. In our own society it is the liberal who is ever worried over whether government will mete out some punishment which is considered “cruel and unusual” (i.e. the death penalty), and so contrary to the constitution. Beyond this, the liberal is concerned that we not punish the criminal at all. He is more interested in having a program of rehabilitation rather than punishment. “Give the guy another chance . . . and another . . . and another.” Never mind the consequences for society generally or for the victims specifically.

There is little doubt that the same thinking is at work in the effort to undermine the biblical doctrine of hell. The liberal cannot believe in a God who will punish, much less punish in a place and under circumstances so terrible, as are portrayed in the scriptural pictures of hell.

All of his reasonings and rationalizations notwithstanding, it is still the teaching of the Word of God. Let us not fall prey to such subjective and heretical thinking, for in doing so we may very well experience the reality of God’s place of punishment for the wicked — first-hand!

Guardian of Truth XXXV: 1, p. 14
January 7, 1993